wrote his dying Letter very credulous For what were these comfortable and ravishing inventions that could so much beatifie a Man in that sad condition That God takes no care of Men that Men have no other Being than their Bodies that Death annihilates them for ever that they have no greater Happiness than to gratifie their sensual appetites and to please themselves with reflecting upon it Ravishing inventions these to compose the thoughts of a dying Man For first what comfort or happiness can there be in casting off all entercourse and commerce with a Deity Is it not much better to have a modest and awfull reverence of a Divine Providence than to cut off all dependence upon his bounty and goodness Nothing can equal the satisfaction of Mind that a good Man reaps from his trust and confidence in God for he is ever secure of his care and kindness in all conditions and what greater quiet can he enjoy than to have a well grounded assurance that he stands upon good terms with and has a powerfull interest in the great and sovereign Governour of all things He is in all conditions safe under his almighty Protection in that there is upon the supposition of a Divine Providence a kind of Friendship between God and all good Men so that it is not in his power not to be good to the good Thus what happiness can exceed that of Hermogenes in Plutarch who could say of himself the Gods that know all things and can doe all things are so much my Friends and so highly concern'd for my welfare that I am never night nor day out of their watchfull Providence but whatever I doe I have their assistance and whatever I design their direction And now beside the gifts of Providence in themselves this is that which affects with the greatest delight to think that they are tokens of the Divine Love and Goodness But by taking away the Being of a Divine Providence the Epicurean robs himself of that which is most delightfull in his happiness and leaves nothing wherewith to relieve himself in his afflictions For in the next place when he thinks to take refuge in Death that as Plutarch observes is such another kind of comfort as if you should tell a Man in a storm at Sea that your Ship has no Pilot and that there is no hopes of allaying the Tempest but yet however be not afraid for in a little time the Ship shall split and sink and when you are drown'd then the Storm will trouble you no longer Such is the Philosophy of the Epicureans in all great calamities Do you hope for any ease from the Deity by your Prayers You are too vainly conceited his blessed Nature is concern'd about nothing but it self Do you expect a recompence in the life to come Be not deceived when you are dead you shall be for ever uncapable of Sense and therefore of Pleasure and for this reason I advise you to eat drink and be merry in the fury of the Storm because by and by you shall sink and sink for ever So that granting to Epicurus his darling Principle that after Death there remains nothing of us sensible of Pain or Pleasure and therefore though we lose our Beings yet as long as we are not capable of being affected with the loss we thereby become no more miserable than we were before we were put into Being Granting I say all this yet the love of Being and the desire of self-preservation is so vehement and earnest that the very fear of ever being defeated of it is a desperate confusion of all the joy and tranquility of present life Such a Man knows not which way to determine his thoughts and designs but his Soul or as they will have it his Fancy pines and languishes for want of some sutable Object to entertain it self withall and sinks for ever into despair and melancholy The utmost Happiness of this life is in it self so vain and empty that in spite of all the arts of diversion and forgetfulness 't is infinitely unable to appease our discontents and Men that have nothing else to trust to what dismal and disconsolate lives must they live in every condition If they lie under calamities and afflictions this is an intolerable accession to the load For is it not a sad reflection to consider that when the period of life is so short and fading so much of so little should be lost and worn away in sorrow and misery And no doubt it cannot but be hugely comfortable to a Man that groans under the sorrows of a sharp Disease to despair of any other remedy or deliverance but in eternal Death and it must be a mighty relief against the unavoidable cares of Life to consider that when a Man has spent the greatest part of his days in toil and drudgery he must then die for ever So that according to this Hypothesis the whole and best account of Life will be no better than this that it is a short period of trouble and misery and that Men are born into the world onely to grieve and die And no doubt they cannot but be much in love with their Beings that they cannot value at an higher rate For if the date of our existence expired with that of our lives and if our whole duration were but threescore years and ten if all our hopes were buried with our Bodies and if wewere thrust into Being onely after a few days or years to be thrust back into nothing it is much more eligible never to have been born than to be born onely to drop a tear and vent a groan and die For who would choose to float up and down a few minutes in this stormy and tempestuous world instantly to disappear and sink back into nothing Who would be born for no other end than that he might be put into a capacity to die Who would enter upon this tragical Scene of things onely to appear and so return into dust and silence Who would dance upon these restless Waves a little while till either Violence crushes or Nature sinks the bubble into an eternal nothing But if on the contrary a Man should happen to enjoy the delights of ease affluence and prosperity a perpetual health and an undisturbed tranquility how does this meditation dash and scatter all his joys With what a weight of dispair and astonishment must it lie upon his oppressed Mind And how must he for ever droop and languish under the expectations of his endless fate In a word what is or what can be conceived more frightfull to the minds or the fancies of Men especially in Prosperity than the aspect of eternal Death And yet this representation haunts and follows such Persons like a murther'd Ghost in all companies and all delights Nothing is able to lay or divert its importunity It frights away all considerations and the more Men study to reconcile their Minds to their Fate the more it scares and
done much more like a Philosopher if he would have instructed us how to doe it and furnished us with Arms and Weapons for the Combate otherwise it would have been more advisable to lie down under the Burthen then to think of making resistance to no purpose For that is onely a new trouble and vexation and adds fury to pain like a Captive that will not yield to his imprisonment but bites his Chains and fights with the Stone-walls to assert his Liberty Or to keep more closely to our Authour's metaphor that resolves not to lie down under a weight though he knows that he cannot bear it For so he immediately tells us Nunc hoc plerique faciunt attrahunt in se ruinam cui obstandum est Istud quod premit quod impendet quod urget si subducere te coeperis sequetur gravius incumbet Si contra steteris obniti volueris repelletur Men draw ruine upon themselves by shunning what they ought to bear when they would avoid what lies upon them it presses them so much the heavier but if they keep their station they support it But what if I cannot bear up under it must I not then yield whether I will or no I must and it is no more in my power to thrust away a Disease by force than to support the Ruins of a falling Rock Some more advices there are to the same purpose that is to no more than that supposing the Firmament it self should fall they should advice us to prepare our Shoulders without the help of any other props to bear it up § XXI But if there is no Remedy we must not fear to die and this the Epicureans reckon to be the first point of Happiness For seeing Death is unavoidable that Man can never enjoy any tranquillity of Mind that continually dreads so great an evil And therefore here they begin to lay their first foundations of Wisedom in the overthrow of their worst and greatest Enemy And indeed they that have conquer'd the fear of Death have nothing else to fear But alas that is an insuperable Evil and the most insupportable Calamity of humane Life So that though Happiness were otherwise acquirable in this World this alone is more than enough to sadden all our joys and overwhelm them with perpetual melancholy and sorrow For suppose a Man born with all the advantages of an healthfull Body and a chearfull Mind and blest with all the circumstances of Success and Fortune yet when he had compassed all his Projects when he was happy to the utmost of his capacities when all things had conspired to complete his Felicity so that there remain'd no unsatisfied hopes or desires even then having no farther Expectations wherewith to entertain his Mind he would naturally fall into the melancholy meditation of Death and the Grave Now what Reflection can be more sad and dismal than the inevitable necessity of bidding an eternal adieu to all his mirth and happiness What a tormenting satisfaction must he enjoy in his freest Caresses of pleasure and delight whilst he knows the fatal Knife to hang perpetually over his Head So uncomfortable would be the Condition of the most happy and fortunate Men in the World that when they had arrived at the highest pitch of humane Felicity the most pleasant prospect they could take from thence would be the gloomy Regions of everlasting Death and Darkness and all the advantage they should gain by their height would be onely to see themselves encompassed with the Grave and bottomless Dungeons of Oblivion which they know must after a few days swallow them up for ever And now what can create greater horrour than the fear of an eternal Annihilation What is there so much shrinks and affrights the Mind of Man as the dark and fearfull Thoughts of its own Mortality How must it for ever die and languish under the dreadfull expectations of eternal Darkness when after a short mushrome life it must return into dust and silence and be for ever buried in the horrour and loathsomness of the Grave So that when men have done and talked all they can nothing can ever vanquish the fear of Death but the hope of Immortality This and this alone is able to scatter all the black and melancholy Apprehensions of our approaching Fate and to support our Minds against all its Horrours And without this however Men may pretend to comfort themselves with Apothegms Paradoxes and brave Sayings the Terrour of Death is insuperable to all other Principles and Resolutions Thus what a lame and silly device is that great Subtilty of Epicurus to this purpose That death cannot hurt us because when that is we are not For first there is no appetite either more strong or more natural to any thing that is sensible of its Being than the desire of the continuation of its Existence This desire results from the same instinct of Nature with the passion of self-love And it is as possible to reconcile a Man to an abhorrency of himself as 't is to the thoughts of his Annihilation For if he delight in the enjoyment of his Being he cannot but dread the loss of his enjoyment and therefore 't is a dismal meditation do what we can to think of being blotted out of Life for ever So that notwithstanding this device the continual foresight of this black and inevitable Fate of things cannot but damp all our mirth and embitter our biggest joys with the saddest accents of grief and sorrow And it is in vain to advise us as Epicurus does to accustom our selves to the thoughts of Death when Nature it self recoils and stands aghast at the very apprehensions of it And the Man that is seriously possest with the Opinion of its being an everlasting Annihilation can never after lift up his head with any cheerfulness and clearness of spirit but will droop away his life in spite of all his arts and diversions with a perpetual inward dismayedness and discontent And I may safely appeal to the sad experience of Epicurus himself and all his followers whether any thing so much checks and abates the comfort of their lives as the importune thoughts of dying If they would speak out their inward pangs they must confess that when they have done all they can to reconcile themselves to this necessity of Fate that they dread nothing with so much anguish and confusion as the approach and apprehension of Death It is a stupifying horrour and strikes Nature it self with an infinite and unexpressible amazement But Epicurus himself say they a little before his death when he was quite worn out with the Stone and Strangury the torment whereof he thought so exquisite that nothing could increase it was able to magnifie that mighty pleasure and happiness that he then reaped from the remembrance of his wise thoughts and inventions But certainly if he expected to be believed either himself was none of the wisest or he thought his Friend Hermachus to whom he
for his so doing beside his running down the Epicurean Philosophy in gross and yet that as much concerns the Cyrenaicks as themselves for though they differ in this particular Proposition they both agree in the same general Principle that there is no Happiness but of the Body And that being supposed it is hard to say who gives the wisest advice to prevent misery either he that by foresight abates but extends the Pain or he that by neglect contracts it into a sharper but a shorter fit Though which soever is best they are both no better than the comforts of Despair which is the very abyss of misery for they both resolve into one and the same Principle that we are condemn'd to misery and therefore says one count upon it aforehand and then you will feel it less when it comes no says the other think as little of it as is possible it is enough to endure when we cannot avoid it And this is all the comfort that our Philosopher and indeed all Sects of Philosophers send us in against the Evils and Misfortunes of Life to let us know that such and such is the condition and fate of Mankind Art thou tortur'd with any violent and sharp Disease why thou wert born with a Body liable to such Distempers Has Death robb'd thee of thy dearest Friend why he was born Mortal Hast thou suffer'd great Losses why then Fortune is unconstant c. A strange way to be happy this onely by counting upon being miserable Can this mitigate the tortures of the Stone to be told that my Body is exposed to their rage does this lessen my Pain Has it any influence upon my sensories or does it at all dull and mortifie their sensations Nay is not this the very root of all my misery that I have such a sad and experimental conviction of the inevitable Evils of humane Life And when a Man is rackt and torn apieces with torments 't is no more ease than it is news to him to be told that indeed he may suffer them So that the result of all came to no more than this we all know the worst of our condition that it is fatally miserable and therefore we must resolve to bear it as we can which is not to make us patient but fullen discontented and desperate What then will you say is there no difference between a Fool and a Philosopher Truly upon their Principles very little as to this Point They are both equally liable to the sorrows and calamities of Life and equally destitute of any grounds of comfort to support their Minds under their sufferings For it is not Paradoxes and great Sayings that can doe the business and they may preach to us ten thousand witty Apothegms but nothing can ever really affect us unless the discovery of some real and substantial good that indeed would enable us to endure all our present sorrows not onely with patience but with cheerfulness in short nothing but the reasonable hope and expectation of the happiness of another Life can bear us up under the sorrows and calamities of this And therefore this Principle being not taken in among their philosophick Rules Advices and Receipts of Happiness they fell as short of its attainment as the vulgar and the ignorant part of Mankind Though I will not say that they were altogether as miserable because the foolish people superinduce their own voluntary trouble from within to their casual calamities from without Thus though a Philosopher does not asswage his Pain by his Patience yet a Fool increases it by his Impatience Though the main advantage of all their Philosophy was this that it instructed them in the true value of the things of this Life so that they might not abuse themselves and their hopes with too swelling and vain expectations and so forgo the actual comforts of their lives such as they are for pompous and troublesome nothings And that is the unhappy condition of the vulgar herd that they understand neither themselves nor the World but are bred up to Covetousness or Ambition and fancy to reap such a vast Happiness out of their designs that is not in the least suited to their present condition but is onely such a Paradise as they dream of and thus not being aware of the meanness of their capacity forgetting their mortality and not considering that they creep upon the Earth they think to lift their heads alost and fancy they walk among the Stars take mighty pains to compass their little great designs and if at last they doe it they are then sadly cheated of their expectations if they doe it not they are then infinitely undone and for ever strangled with insupportable grief and anguish This I say is the great and common folly of humane Life and the ground of Mens renouncing that little quiet they might otherwise have enjoyed onely to pursue some great and anxious fancy Whereas wise Men deal faithfully with themselves reflect impartially upon the condition of their Natures understand the true state of humane Affairs and expect no more from the World than the World is able to afford and hence they moderate their designs and desires and do not lose that little present tranquility that they might enjoy with surious and restless prosecutions after such an Happiness as they can never obtain But though they do not load themselves with needless cares and vexations yet they must with all the rest of Mankind couch under such as are necessary and unavoidable because they have no substantial good to support their Minds under them and for want of that the difference between a Fool and a Philosopher in point of positive Happiness is very little and inconsiderable § XXIX And thus having taken in as it were all these little Outworks of the Philosophers we now come to lay siege to their very Capital viz. That let our condition be what it will Vertue will supply all Wants and overcome all Miseries or that that alone is as Brutus expresses it abundantly sufficient to its own Happiness Than which there is no one thing more greatly and magnificently said in all Philosophy and it is a Sentence worthy the noble Courage and Gallantry of its Authour by which he apparently stear'd the whole course of his Life though it seems it fail'd him at his Death But if there be any such thing as Vertue says our great Philosopher it is entirely satisfied in it self and being so it is above all the attempts of Fortune and then may with confidence and bravery despise all whatsoever that can befall it This this is the true ground of all philosophick Wisedom slighting all other things as trifles wholly to employ our selves in this great and noble exercise of Life O thou sovereign Guide of humane Kind thou Patroness of good Men and Scourge of Vice how forlorn and despicable a thing were the Life of Man or Man himself without thee Thou didst at first found Cities thou didst at first call
distracts their thoughts There is no charm nor counsel against necessity and a terrour that is unavoidable is above the power and the relief of Philosophy and will not be vanquish't by stubborn thoughts or proud words So that it is altogether as easie to prevail with a Man to hate and abhor his own Being as to reconcile him to the thoughts of his own destruction For by the same necessity that Nature loves and desires the continuance of it self it recoils and starts back from all thoughts of its dissolution This then is upon the Epicurean Supposition a vain an useless and unreasonable advice being 't is so insuperable a contradiction to the nature of Things So that the fear of Death which is the thing I am now to represent is as certain and inexorable as Death it self and Men may as soon devest themselves of their own Natures as suppress the convulsions of this inbred passion And now when it is so incurable and yet withall so importunate and disquieting it is easie to imagine what desperately cheerfull lives those Men must live that always live under its sad and dismal apprehensions § XXII But beside this great and sovereign Antidote against the fear of Death they have several other little receits scatter'd up and down in their Writings I shall but briefly mention them because all that little force which they seem to have depends upon the former fundamental principle First say they let us be thankfull to the bounty of Nature for making our lives so long instead of repining at it for making them no longer But I say if our whole Being be at all mortal we have no reason to be at all thankfull for it and if our whole Being be worn out with this Life it is much more eligible never to have been But then say they we were admitted into Life upon this condition that we should give place to others as others have given place to us Were we so Then were we all admitted upon unacceptable terms Yes but by troubling our selves in vain we do but add one misery to another It is true but that is a fatal misery and it is as necessary to fear Death as it is to die and that is it that makes up the complaint that we are put in such a state of Being which we cannot enjoy without this continual anguish and perplexity annexed to it So that how wise or foolish a thing it is to fear Death is not at all material but whether it be unavoidable though if it be I am sure it is a very foolish thing to endeavour against it But how irksome soever Death may be yet seeing it is fatal we ought to make it as easie as we can by a voluntary compliance with it but this beside the folly that is common to all the rest that it advises to an impossibility is not so properly compliance as despair and is like the condition of a condemn'd Malefactour that goes to his Execution onely because otherwise he must be driven and whipt to it And no Man has any other comfort all his Life-time against the terrours of Death than a Thief upon the Gallows that would if it were possible counterfeit to die cheerfully because there is no remedy To the same purpose is that other advice that it is in vain to fear Death because it is natural necessary and inevitable that is because it is remediless and there lies the very agony of all our horrour that a thing so infinitely terrible should withall be so utterly unavoidable And when they tell us how strange a folly and madness it is to torment our selves with the fear of that which we are infallibly certain we can never escape they do but perswade us to the madness of despair instead of courage and resolution For how foolish or unreasonable soever this fear may be it is natural antecedent to the choice of our wills and the discretion of our understandings and so above all the rules of Prudence and prescriptions of Philosophy They can onely guide and instruct our Minds in things subject to their own election but cannot affect much less over rule the instincts of Nature In the next place we are already dead say they to so much of our Life as is past and gone so that so much as we live we die and that which we call Death is but our last Death and therefore as we fear not our Death that is past why should we that which is to come But what Child understands not the difference between Life and Death and if to live be to die notwithstanding this quibble we are troubled never the less that this new way of dying puts an end to our old way of dying and if we have been dying ever since we were born that is the thing that grieves us that we cannot be dying so for ever But Bassus Aufidius the Epicurean old Man in Seneca reconciled himself to his approaching Death with this reason because it was as absurd to fear Death as old Age which yet all Men desire to come to in that as old Age follows Youth so Death follows old Age. But if he were in good earnest satisfied it is a sign that he had lived not onely to his old Age but to his second Childhood For old Age is desirable not because it follows Youth but because it defers Death and that is it which makes it so much less valuable than Youth because it is so much nearer to Death And the Philosophers reason had been altogether as comfortable if he had preferr'd old Age before Youth because his Youth was very old it being many years since he was a young Man whereas his old Age was of a later date he having been but a little time an old Man By which device he might have proved to himself that Youth is old Age and old Age Youth Much like this is that other reasoning wherewith Gassendus himself seems so much pleased that whereas we now count our selves happy if we live to an hundred years yet if the natural course of our Life were as much shorter we should be as much satisfied with twenty and if our natural course reach't to a thousand years we should then be as much troubled to die at six hundred as now at sixty and so forward It is like all the rest of the Philosophick comforts and is so far from reconciling us to Death at any time that it is a demonstration that there is no time in which an Epicurean can or ought to be content to die and that be our lives longer or shorter yet unless they are eternal we cannot rid our selves of this importunate and intolerable evil And of the same nature is that witty saying of Seneca that a little or great circle are both equal in perfection of figure though not in quantity so is the Life of Man whether it last to twenty or to an hundred years But certainly no Man that might live to an hundred
would be content to die at twenty years of Age for this reason because a little circle is as round as a great one But lastly Gassendus has a very remarkable device with which the learned Man is so much pleased as often to repeat it that though a Man's Life may be short in it self yet may he make it equal with the duration of the whole World because he may converse with the transactions of all former times and be as well acquainted with them as if himself had then actually lived And as for the time to come he knowing that nothing shall be but what has been understands all future events as if present so that a wise Man partly by memory partly by foresight may extend his short Life to all Ages of the World But if he could unless he could make himself immortal too the Objection would still lie as heavy as ever Beside can any wise Man be so very fancifull as seriously by this device to perswade and satisfie himself that though he is not above forty years old he was born at the beginning of the World and that though he die to morrow he shall live to the end of it If he can he must be a very foolish Man too if he cannot it will be no support against the approach of Death that he hath already lived to the World's end This is the full account of all the Happiness of humane Nature according to the Epicurean Principles which you see without this support of a future state sinks of it self into a bottomless want and misery And therefore to anticipate our Exceptions Gassendus at the beginning of his moral Philosophy has warily as he thinks distinguish't between a twofold Happiness of Man the one supernatural which we are taught by Religion that instructs us in the knowledge of that future state of Bliss that good and pious Men shall enjoy in the vision of God The other natural which we are taught by Philosophy whereby we are instructed to live as happily in this Life as the condition of humane Nature in general and every Man 's own circumstances in particular are capable of And this he says is all the Felicity that Mankind can naturally desire or justly aspire to But this is like all the rest of his excuses particularly that of his account of Epicurus his filial Reverence to the Gods as opposed to the vulgar servile Fear when by denying their Providence he expresly destroys all manner of reverence to them So again when he distinguishes of two sorts of Sense the one external that of the Body the other internal that of the Mind and that when Epicurus affirms that all sense is extinguish't in Death it may be interpreted of all sense of the first kind when nothing can be more evident than that he intended all manner of sense whatsoever So now here does he distinguish between supernatural and natural Happiness and that it was proper for Epicurus to treat onely of the latter as a Philosopher when it is so notorious that as a Philosopher he made it his utmost endeavour to overthrow the very Being and belief of the former But however if this Happiness which he calls natural be all that Mankind is naturally capable of then is he naturally capable of none at all And as for the two Arguments he subjoins to perswade us to be content with it they onely aggravate and upbraid our wants instead of satisfying our desires As first that otherwise we forget our Mortality and the frailty of our Nature in that we are born exposed to innumerable mischiefs and miseries which is nothing else but the description of a forlorn and miserable condition and amounts to no more than this that a wise Man must be happy i. e. content with his condition because he knows his condition to be miserable And secondly that it is some comfort that when all Men are exposed to misery and when there are so many degrees of it that you are less miserable than others and that you are as little miserable as the condition of your Nature will admit of That is to say that though I endure most of the calamities of humane Life yet must I think my self an happy Man if there be any one Man in the World that endures more and though I feel my self actually miserable yet Philosophy teaches me to think my self happy because I feel as little misery as any of my Neighbours If these are the great Topicks of philosophick Consolation they had better prescribe but this one Remedy instead of all viz. To make our selves happy onely by despairing of ever being so for that is the last result of all their Propositions And therefore to conclude it is remarkable that Hegesias his Philosophy who vehemently perswaded all Men to be their own Executioners was but the natural emprovement of that of Aristippus whose Scholar he was For when the Master had once taught that there is no Happiness but in the pleasures of the Body it was easie for the Disciple to add that then there is none at all and therefore Death is the best thing that we can either pray for or give our selves For our Bodies are liable to such an infinite number of Evils and our Minds so sensible of what our Bodies feel that it is much more eligible not to be at all than to be in a state of so much misery And that is the unavoidable consequence of all Opinions that take away a future Immortality Though it is pretty to observe that this same Hegesias as warm and eloquent as he was in perswading other Men to throw away their lives when King Ptolomy threatned him himself with Death if he would not forbear those kind of Discourses to the People how easily he was cured of his Pedantry For how pleasant soever the death of others might seem to him yet when it concern'd himself it was quickly too hard for his Philosophy And that is the true desperate condition of all Men of the same Principles that they neither care to live nor care to die And now upon these phantastick Principles after what a rate do we rant and with what magnanimity and greatness of Mind do we defie all the miseries of Life and pangs of Death And how do we boast that in spite of the extremest torments that tyranny it self can inflict upon us we will enjoy Pleasures equal to the Happiness of the Gods Roast us in the Bull of Phalaris we will make it more pleasant than a Bed of Roses and instead of roaring out through extremity of pain we will spoil the Tyrants jest and onely laugh and sing quà m suave hoc est quà m hoc non curo But could one think it possible that the same Man who had placed all Happiness in Pleasure and all Misery in Pain should be so artificial as to reconcile his sovereign Happiness with all the anguish and extremity of Pain that is to say to think himself most absolutely
Pleasures whilst this ugly thought haunts us day and night jam jamque esse moriendum Whatever diverting arts we may fly to to stifle this reflection it is so unwelcome to our Minds and so affrightfull to our Natures and so insuperable to all the powers of Reason and Philosophy that when all is done there is no remedy but we must lie down and languish all our days under its fatal and intolerable expectations so that if any thing can be said well of Death it is onely this that it delivers us from the fear of it self But however proceeds he Death ought not to appear so formidable to a wise Man though it were for no other reason than that it delivers us from the miseries of Life And when it is objected that granting all his subtilties and that there is indeed no capacity of Misery where there is no Sense yet illud angit vel potius excruciat discessus ab omnibus iis quae sunt bona in Vitâ 'T is this that grieves and gripes our Souls that we must for ever forsake all the joys and comforts of this Life he returns upon the Objection with this brisk and nimble Answer Vide ne à malis dici verius possit You miserably mistake your self in the framing your Objection instead of the Joys and Comforts you should rather have said the Evils and Miseries of this Life And when you consider the emptiness and dissatisfaction of all its Enjoyments and reflect upon the smart and the weight of all its Calamities you will be so far from trembling at the horrour of your Fate that you will esteem it your greatest Privilege and there may you when you please take Sanctuary from all those troubles and vexations that pursue you and all Mankind through the whole course of Life And now is not this think you a mighty support to the Minds of Men to be informed that all the Happiness they are capable of is onely to cease to be miserable With what cheerfulness and tranquility can those Men live that live all their days upon this lank Meditation that though I must endure Torment as long as I endure Life yet the time will come when I shall escape both and cease to be miserable by ceasing to be Oh the transport and ravishment of these philosophick Reflections Who can desire greater ease and complacency of Soul than to be always thinking if thinking at all that though my present state be so utterly forlorn and restless yet however this is my comfort that I shall one day be at quiet when Death shall deprive me of all Sense and Being for ever Is not this a very comfortable representation of the best condition and whole capacity of humane Nature to be uncessantly bandied up and down like the old Britains between the Sea and the Barbarians between two such formidable Evils The sorrows of Life drive us to Death for refuge and the horrours of Death fright us back upon the Miseries that we fly and thus whether we resolve to live or to die we are equally distressed and miserable So that he is so far by this principle of Consolation from giving us any comfort against the terrour of Death that he has instead of that destroyed all the comfort of Life too But Nature he tells us has not granted us our Beings upon the Title of Fee-simple but has onely lent us the use of our Lives for a certain time and that during pleasure and therefore we have no reason to complain of her whenever she demands them back because she gave them upon no other condition than that we should always be ready to resign them upon demand But if Nature have clogg'd her Kindness to us in bestowing our Beings upon us with this hard Condition she had been much kinder if she had never bestowed them at all For the severity of the Condition annexed to the Gift not onely destroys all the pleasure and enjoyment of it but turns it into anguish and misery And this is all along our very complaint against Nature that she has put us into such a condition of Life as that we cannot enjoy it without continual grief and horrour of Mind So that she has sent us into the World not like her Off-spring but like Malefactours with the sentence of Death passed upon us as soon as we are born And therefore to tell us that this is the order and disposition of Nature is not to answer but to grant the Objection because that alone makes us fatally miserable So that when Monsieur Charon asks me If it grieveth thee to die why wert thou born I tell him plainly if I was born with that Condition of dying for ever I was born to no other purpose than to be miserable So that if it could have been in my power to have prevented my coming into Being I should more passionately have fled from Life than now I do from Death And being I could not avoid to be born I am bound all my days to curse and hate the Cause that gave me so wretched a Being At least if Nature resolved to beget us Mortal she might have been so kind as to have kept from us the knowledge and foresight of our own Mortality and then might we have enjoyed our present lives with some competent content and cheerfulness but when she has given us so strong a love of Life continually to embitter that with as vehement a fear of Death is onely to make our very existence a scence of Misery and to give us our Beings to be a torment to themselves And whereas as he adds for our comfort that there is no such thing as length or shortness of Life in it self but that it consists meerly in comparison and that the Insect whose Life begins and ends with one half revolution of the Sun is as old at the evening of the day as a Man at threescore beside that this is but a poor shift of Sophistry as I have already shewn against the Epicureans I would be content to exchange my Life of sixty years with your little happy Insect that lives but a day For when the Sun has scatter'd all the chill horrours of the night and darkness and gilded the World with light and splendour then it is that this little Creature thrusts up its Head assays its Wings forsakes the Clod that bread it and mounts up into the calm and gentle Air where it sports and revels and rejoyces in that Light and Warmth that gave it Being and dances away all its little Age with mirth and gaiety It s Life is short indeed but pleasant ours long and tedious its Age is all sunshine the greatest part of ours darkness and sorrow it sports away its little interval of Being but ours is fretted and consumed away with restless cares mournings and afflictions But that which makes the main difference between us is that this little Creature as it lives merrily so it dies unconcernedly whereas my whole
Life howsoever otherwise happy is turn'd into meer anguish and bitterness with the perpetual and intolerable horrours of Death And the longer it lasts the more miserable it is in that it is nothing else than to be so much the longer tormented with the fearfull expectation of a certain Evil and therefore as the Law as Cardan observes takes care that at the execution of Malefactours the more modest and less Criminal should be first dispatched but the bolder and greater Offendours be made Spectatours of the Death of others before they suffer'd themselves so Nature where she has a mind to shew the greatest kidness puts soonest out of pain but where she intends severity she keeps Men longer in suspence and makes them to behold their Friends and Companions Fate before she brings them to their own Execution In short this is a very strange oversight of all the Philosophers that when they have instructed us that the love of Life is of all passions the most Natural they should notwithstanding that with the same unanimity agree to perswade us not to fear Death because that is natural too What a contradiction is this in Nature to force us to desire the continuance of Life and yet require us not to fear its discontinuance But if the first be as it is the most natural of all our passions it prevents the force of all others that are inconsistent with it So that if in the first place we desire to live it is a vain attempt to perswade us not to fear to die because upon the supposition of the love of Life the fear of Death is unavoidable So that the Philosophers having unanimously laid the love of Being as the fundamental Principle of all their Morality it spoils all their consolatory Discourses from what Topicks soever against the dread and terrour of dying and therefore it is needless for me to pursue any more of their particular Reasonings upon this Argument because they all at first view dash so apparently against this first Principle § XXVII And now having as he supposes vanquisht this King of terrours the fear of Death he thinks it an easie task to rout all the little evils of Life and had he done that he had without any farther pains perform'd his whole design For what can hurt the Man who fears not to die For Death is a remedy always at hand so that if he think it not convenient to struggle with the miseries of Life by dying he may put an end to all But having beaten him out of that Sanctuary which he had raised by his first days Conference we shall follow him through the rest of his ensuing Disputations The two next Enemies therefore that he undertakes are Pain and Grief And though his Discourses upon these Arguments are very large copious and eloquent yet all the Philosophy of them is comprehended in two or three short Propositions The first is That Dishonour is worse than Pain and yet nothing can be more dishonourable to the courage of a Man or more unbecoming the dignity of a Philosopher than complaints and impatience or an abject behaviour under Calamities Yes no doubt there is a decency in bearing Afflictions with a manly Courage What then is this any remedy to relieve or asswage the Pain For first wherein consists this ground of comfort Is it not that other Men judge that you behave your self handsomely and like a Man Now who are they They are either the foolish or the wise part of Mankind But how can the Opinion of Fools afford any comfort to a wise Man Especially when you have and that justly discarded the common People as an ignorant idle and regardless herd And as for the Opinion of the Wise which way can that alleviate any Man's Pain For if you are in Pain and counterfeit that you are not if they are wise they know that you dissemble and certainly their knowledge of your Hypocrisie can be no comfort or if they thought you in good earnest it is not conceivable how their false Opinion should afford any true satisfaction to a wise Man But secondly how does the decency of my behaviour any way asswage my Pain Or do the Cholick the Gout and the Stone rage ever the less for the stoutness of my look And then if the Pain be not rebated by my Courage though I have strength of Mind enough to seem to follow this advice yet am I notwithstanding never the less miserable Not that I deny it to be a wise advice for though it is not sufficient to remove our Pains yet it instructs us not to double their smart by fretting under them And that is the most material difference between a wise Man and a Fool in this case that the one endures onely the simple and natural sense of his Pain whereas the other by his impatience adds to that the anguish of his own resentment which affects quicker and pierces deeper than the Pain it self and makes way for it through the Body into the very Soul But though the advice be wise not to make our selves more miserable than we needs must be yet it is utterly ineffectual to make us less miserable than we really are And therefore it is no remedy against the Distemper for the cure whereof it is prescribed because the Pain it self is the same with all the resolution in the World as it is without it And yet that is the thing that he undertakes to bring us to an absolute neglect and contempt of all Pain And then lastly we are in quest of Happiness whereas this onely instructs us how to behave our selves under Misery and so destroys the Supposition of the Subject of our Question which is Whether a Man under Pain can be Happy and that he cannot is very evident because all Pain is Miserable And if it be so Sentences will doe no good unless he could give us some real ground of comfort to support our Minds and cheer up our Spirits and for that there can be no other than the thoughts of and reflections upon an Happiness to come And that indeed would make all our Pains very light and tolerable but without it there is no remedy but they must lie upon us with their full load But Vertue he says requires Patience It does so but it does not asswage Pains And if it could yet taken alone it is so far from supporting our Minds that it cannot support it self as I have in part proved already both against the Epicureans and the Stoicks and shall do more largely when I come to consider our Authour's Discourse upon that Argument And this is all that I meet with material in his Second Book For as for the Examples of the Lacedaemonian Boys and the Roman Gladiatours and other Instances of Hardiness they onely prove the strange power of Custom and Education but are no proof that they are less affected with their Pain because they are able to stifle the natural expressions of it
his Divine Authority from the undoubted and undeniable evidence of his Resurrection For to that alone he refers us as the last and most satisfactory proof of his Commission and depends upon it as the clearest demonstration not onely of his Doctrine but of all the other Arguments whereby he proved his Doctrine And for that reason it is that we find him so often injoining his Disciples not to publish his other Works and Miracles till after his Resurrection Thus when his Apostles had declared to him the firmness of their Belief that he was the true Messias he streightly charges them Matt. 16. 20. that they should then tell no Man of it and takes occasion thence to acquaint them with his approaching Death and Passion and prepare them for the belief of his Resurrection from the Grave Ascension into Glory and Mission of the Holy Ghost By which great Miracles he was as Saint Paul observes Rom. 1. 4. to be declared the Son of God with Power but chiefly by his Resurrection for it was as the same Apostle elsewhere expresses it the working of the might of his Power which he wrought in Christ when the Father of Glory raised him from the dead Ephes. 1. 19. And this probably was the meaning of those words immediately added by our Saviour to his foremention'd Discourse Verily I say unto you there are those here present that shall not taste of Death till they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom Matt. 16. 28. In that he was as evidently declared by this to be the Messias or Son of God as if they had seen him solemnly enthron'd in Heaven by the holy Angels So again when the Devils that he cast out were forced to confess him to be the Messias he still commands them silence He was not willing that there should be too much notice taken of him before his Resurrection because by that he intended to give such a palpable proof of his Divine Authority as should give undoubted credit to all his former Miracles And so again when he had taken his three chief Disciples to behold his Transfiguration thereby to confirm their Faith against the time of his Suffering when he had done that he charges them saying tell the Vision to no Man untill the Son of Man be risen from the dead Matt. 17. 9. Because the great evidence and certainty of that would give undoubted credit to this and all their other Reports whereas till then Men would be very difficulty perswaded to believe such prodigious and unusual things though after that and the undeniable power of the Holy Ghost in the Apostles who attested it it would be so far from being at all difficult to yield to their Testimony that it would be almost impossible to distrust it And therefore accordingly the first Preachers of the Gospel laid the whole stress of their Faith upon this one Principle This was the resolution of all their Disputes with the unbelieving World and when Men in those days enquired after the truth of the Christian Religion the onely state of the Question was whether Christ were risen from the dead This alone without the assistance of any other proof was thought such a forcible and convictive confirmation that it superseded the consideration of all other less evident and important reasonings and where this was not able to prevail upon the minds of Men they despaired of any success from any other Topicks and Principles This then being so I shall in this one Article specifie according to the method before proposed those wild those extravagant those incredible absurdities that must be swallowed upon its disbelief § IV. First then they believe that the Apostles Evangelists and Disciples of Jesus who pretended to have been eye Witnesses of it both would and could impose upon the World with a manifest lie and in that they believe ten thousand absurdities For it is easily credible no doubt that Men endued I will not say with Principles of common Sense Reason and Discretion that is more than I need suppose it is enough to our present purpose onely to suppose them possest with that natural Instinct that they have in common with all other Creatures viz. Love of Life and desire of self-preservation It is I say easily credible that such Creatures as these would so willingly so wilfully forgo all advantages of Pleasure and Profit so cheerfully expose themselves to so many Hazards and Hardships so many Reproaches and Contumelies and so undauntedly endure so many Tortures and Miseries so many Bonds and Imprisonments so many Martyrdoms and Persecutions onely to bear Testimony to what themselves knew to be a lewd and shameless Imposture 'T is a likely thing that so many plain and simple Men should conspire together to the manifest ruine of all their worldly Interests onely to gain credit and belief to a palpable Falshood That so many hundreds that pretended to be eye Witnesses both of all our Saviour's Miracles in his Life-time and his Resurrection after Death should lay down their Lives to attest a false Report and that no Torments no nor the most cruel Death could ever prevail upon any of them to deny or disown their Testimony It is possible indeed though not very usual that Men should lay down their Lives for a false Opinion because it is possible for them to believe it to be true but it is by no means credible that they should persist to Death for the justification of a false Testimony For if it were false they knew it to be so and then if they will die in defence of its truth they contradict the first instinct of their own Natures and throw away their Lives for nothing Especially when beside that there was no present advantage in the Lie it self so none could ensue upon it For they could not possibly expect any reward of Wealth or Honour or Power from the propagation of an extravagant and a proofless Lie Nay they quickly found that they must either part with all that was dear to them in this Life and even Life it self or forbear to spread and divulge the Fable Now that Beings endued with humane Nature should act and suffer after such a rate for no design at all nay against the design of all designs is a thing so cross to all belief that I may challenge all the Infidels in the World to assign any one thing that is more incredible If a great number of harmless and well-meaning Persons should offer their Oaths to attest any matter of Fact it justly commands and immediately over-rules our Belief And yet it is an easie thing to suppose that a great multitude would seal it with their Blood that they saw Jesus doe so many miraculous things though they were conscious to themselves that they never saw him doe any one of them They were certainly in a very pleasant humour when they covenanted among themselves to sacrifice both their Lives and Fortunes to abuse the World with an
unprofitable cheat but yet however one would think Racks and Gibbets would have spoil'd the frolick And it is highly credible that any Men but much more these Men who have given us no ground to suspect their integrity because they could have no motive to forgoe it should prevaricate after such an odd and extravagant manner with Mankind yes and themselves too And when so many plain and simple Men so apparently without Craft and without Design without Advantage without Interest have given the World the most unquestionable proofs that they were serious and in good earnest as to the certain truth and reality of what they related after all this what wise and wary Man would not suspect the Forgery and disbelieve the Relation But this Argument I find prosecuted by Eusebius with extraordinary acuteness both of Wit and Reason Supposing says he that our Saviour never wrought any of those Miracles that are unanimously reported of him by his Disciples we must then suppose that they enter'd into Covenant among themselves after this manner Men and Brethren what that Seducer was that lived among us t'other day and how justly he suffer'd Death for his vile Imposture we of all Men have most reason to know and though others that were less intimately acquainted with him and his ways of deceiving might have some opinion of his worth and honesty yet we that were the daily Companions of his Conversation saw nothing in him answerable to the greatness of his pretences but that his whole design was by all the boldest Arts of Craft and Hypocrisie to get a Name in the World and therefore let us one and all join hands and enter into solemn Covenant among our selves to propagate the Belief of this impudent Cheat among Mankind and to fain all manner of Lies for its Confirmation to swear that we saw him restore Eyes to the Blind Ears to the Deaf and Life to the Dead and though it be all impudently false yet let us confidently report it nay and stand too it to the last drop of our Blood And because after all his great and glorious Pretences of being no less than the Son of God he was at last executed as a vile Malefactour with all the circumstances of shame and dishonour we must agree among our selves upon some Lie to wipe off this disgrace Let us therefore resolve to affirm with an undaunted impudence that after he was thus dishonourably Crucified the third Day he arose again and often conversed with us in the same familiar way as he had always done before his Execution But then we must be sure to stand unalterably to the impudence of the Lie and to persevere to Death it self in its assertion For what absurdity is there in throwing away our Lives for nothing And why should any Man think it hard to suffer Stripes Racks Bonds Imprisonments Reproaches Dishonurs and Death it self for no reason at all Let us therefore unanimously and vigorously set our selves to the design and with one consent agree to report such impudent Falshoods as are of no advantage either to our selves or to those we deceive or to him for whose sake we deceive Neither let us be content to propagate this Lie onely among our own Country-men but let us resolve to spread it through all parts of the habitable World impose new Laws upon all Nations overthrow all their old Religions command the Romans to quit the Gods of their Ancestours the Greeks to renounce the Wisedom of their Philosophers and the Egyptians the pretended Antiquity of their Superstition Neither will we take the pains to overthrow these ancient Customs of the most polite and most powerfull Nations in the World by the force of Learning or Wit or Eloquence but by the meer Authority of our crucified Master Neither will we stop here but we will travel to all barbarous Nations in the World reverse all their ancient Laws and command their obedience to a new Religion and this let us resolve to go through with an undaunted courage and resolution For it is not an ordinary reward that we expect for our Impudence nor is it for vulgar Crowns and Trophies that we engage our selves in such hard and hazardous enterprises No no we are sure to meet with the utmost severity of the Laws in all places whereever we come and the truth is we deserve it for disturbing the publick Settlement onely to establish a ridiculous Cheat and Imposture But for this who would not endure all the torments in the World burning hanging beheading crucifying and being torn in pieces by wild Beasts All which we must as we will secure the honour of the Impostor encounter with a cheerfull and resolved Mind For what can be more praise-worthy than to abuse God and affront Mankind to no purpose and to reap no other benefit from all our labours beside the pleasure of vain foolish and unprofitable lying And for that alone will we blaspheme all the Religions that have been from the beginning of the World to gain worship to a crucified Malefactour nay we will lay down our Lives for his Reputation notwithstanding that we know him to have been an impudent Impostor and for that reason is it that we honour him so highly because he has put such a dishonourable abuse upon our selves Who would not doe or suffer any thing for the sake of so vile a Man Who would not undergo all manner of Sufferings for a Cause that himself knew to be meer falshood and forgery And therefore let us constantly to the last breath averr that he raised the Dead cleansed Lepers cast out Devils and wrought all manner of Miracles though we are conscious to our selves of the gross falshood of the whole Story that we have meerly forged out of our own brains And therefore let us deceive as many as we can and if people will not be deceived yet however we shall sometime or other enjoy the pleasure of suffering and perhaps of dying for an unprofitable Lie It is no doubt credible that Men should discourse and act after such an extravagant rate as this or that humane Nature that has above all other Creatures an high sense of the love of Life and Self preservation should thrust it self upon a voluntary Death without any motive or any reward or if they should that when so great a multitude had agreed among themselves to carry on such a frantick design they should all persevere in the Lie to the very Death and not one of them be wrought upon by all the threatnings and all the slatteries in the World to betray the Plot and yet this was the case of the Apostles if their Testimony were not true So that it is plain that there is no more required to demonstrate the truth of the Christian Cause against Infidelity than onely to suppose that the Apostles were Men. And that certainly is as modest and moderate a Postulatum as can be premised to any Question And yet that onely being
in the Gospel that other Historians are concern'd to record as well as the Christians are exactly true that is at least a very fair probability that the Christian Writers were faithfull in those other Relations that are peculiar to their own History And this is all that can be expected from foreign Testimony for if such Writers had been exact in the Records of our Saviour's Actions they had then been Christians and not Jews or Heathens Supposing them therefore as they were no Friends to Christianity they have given in all that suffrage to it that can be reasonably demanded from them And now as for the proof hereof it had been much more easie than it is had it not been for the pride and vanity of some of our modern Criticks who care very little what becomes of the truth or falshood of things so they can shew their censuring Faculty upon words and particularly they have in this case set themselves with their utmost critical Severity to disparage or destroy the most eminent Testimonies cited by the Ancients out of foreign Writers in behalf of Christianity Scaliger the Father of them all led the Dance upon what motive I cannot imagine unless it were out of Envy to the Fame and Glory of Eusebius against whom he particularly set himself and his endeavours but however the design looking like a Novelty and carrying in it an ostentation of Learning for that reason alone he could not want a great number of Followers among that sort of Men. But to what little purpose they have spent all their pains and peevishness I now come to represent And here first Josephus the Jew who was contemporary with the Apostles agrees all along with the Evangelists in the History of that time He gives the same account and description of John the Baptist as we reade in the Gospels He gives us the same narration of Herod the Tetrarch and particularly of his marrying his Brother's Wife He mentions the Tax of Cyrenius He records the Acts of the several Governours of Judaea Pontius Pilate Felix and Portius Festus and describes the succession of the several High priests Caiaphas Joha and Alexander the death of Herod Agrippa and of Saint James the Brother of our Lord nay he gives not onely a just History but an high Character of our Lord himself All which our learned Men are willing enough to pass as certain and warrantable History excepting onely that passage concerning our Saviour Onely there is one difficulty in the Tax of Cyrenius which Saint Luke says was about the time of our Saviour's Nativity but Josephus not till after the Banishment of Archelaus which hapned at least nine years after the Death of Herod so that which way to reconcile this difference learned Men have been much puzled and towards its solution have started variety of Conjectures And therefore though it is of no very great concernment I shall give some account of it before I proceed to the Testimony concerning Jesus § XII And first of all Baronius tells us plainly that Josephus is mistaken but then this is to cut the Knot not to untie it for our business is to reconcile him and the sacred History but if we utterly reject him instead of answering the Objection we grant it viz. that there are irreconcileable differences between him and the Evangelists Though here I cannot but wonder at the unusual disingenuity of Casaubon who whereas Baronius affirms that Josephus does in many things of Chronology contradict Saint Luke and therefore if we must stand to his Authority that will enforce us to reject the Evangelist he I say inveighs and declaims upon this as if it were Baronius his Assertion and not his Argument and rates him severely as if he had positively affirm'd that the Testimony of Josephus was sufficient to oblige us to quit that of the Evangelist Whereas he onely makes use of it as a forcible Objection against appealing to Josephus in any matters wherein he contradicts the Scriptures for in such cases says he we cannot admit him without rejecting them Now I say from hence to infer that Baronius affirm'd that we were obliged so to doe became not the ingenuity of a learned Man But the truth of it is to observe once for all Casaubon was little less partial towards one Extreme than Baronius towards the other For as it was the custom of that learned Cardinal and the Writers of the Church of Rome to rake together every thing that might serve their Cause embracing the forged and spurious as well as the true and undoubted records of Antiquity So Casaubon and the learned Men of his way have been as diligent to weaken the Authority of all the most ancient and most authentick Writers so that there is not the least slip in any of the Ancients that they have not observed in their critical Notes upon them and beside that they reject whole Books of the best and earliest Antiquity But by this means they have between them both done this great service to the Christian Church that as they have discover'd the fraud of supposititious Books so they have confirm'd the Authority of the true and genuine And it is by occasion of their disputes that we are come to a certain knowledge of all the sincere records of Antiquity So that at last the Epistles of Ignatius and the Apostolical Canons that have been most of all opposed have by those great endeavours that have been employed to destroy their Authority gain'd and will for ever keep as undoubted a credit as the most unquestion'd pieces of Justin Martyr or Irenaeus The next guess is that of Beza which is followed and variously emproved by Scaliger Casaubon Grotius and others viz. That Cyrenius was employed by Augustus to take two several Musters of the People one with a Tax and the other without it and that was it that was made at the time of our Saviour's Birth For Augustus designing that compendious Account of the Roman Empire which Historians so often speak of and which he left as a guide and direction to his Successours in the Empire sent several Officers through the several Provinces to take an exact account of the number and condition of the Inhabitants and for this purpose though Quintilius Varus were then Prefect of Syria Cyrenius was join'd in Commission with him as a Person that was by reason of his residence in Syria and his Wars in Cilicia exactly acquainted with the Affairs of the East as afterwards he was sent with C. Caesar on the same Errand and when Judaea was reduced into the form of a Province after the Banishment of Archelaus and the first Tax to be imposed immediately by the Romans upon the People he was particularly singled out as the Person most able to manage it So that it is not unlikely that he might be employed in this business though not himself but Quintilius Varus was then Prefect of Syria And if this be so then
But beside this grand Absurdity of wilfully deceiving themselves to no purpose nay against all the foremention'd inconveniences they must be so far beside themselves that when they had abused themselves with a proofless Tale they should join their zcal to the first Impostors for propagating the Cheat to the manifest ruine of their Fortunes and hazard of their Lives and that such vast numbers of them should with such unheard of courage and constancy endure the most exquisite Pains and suffer all kinds of Death either without ever inquiring into the truth of the matter of Fact for which they suffer'd or suffering for it after that rate without any satisfactory Evidence of it Here in short we must believe that such a Doctrine as Christianity published in such a manner as it was should find such an universal entertainment in so short a time without any the least rational proof or evidence of its Divine Authority A Doctrine the truth whereof depended entirely upon a matter of Fact so that if it were false it could not then have escaped confutation and unless it were undoubtedly true could never have obtain'd any belief A Doctrine so unkind to the vicious customs and practices of the Age so contrary to the prejudices of Men and the establisht Religions of the World so unpleasing to Flesh and Bloud so hated and so full of danger That when this Doctrine was published by such Persons Men of mean Education void of Graft or Learning or Eloquence they should without any other help than barely telling a false Story perswade such vast numbers of Men to forsake the Religions in which they were educated and without any hope of profit nay with a certain prospect of all the miseries of Life yes and Death it self to embrace this new this despised this hated this persecuted Forgery Lastly That great numbers both of the most learned and wisest Men that lived in the Ages next and immediately after it should after the strictest enquiry concerning the truth of these things not onely suffer themselves to be imposed upon by so late and palpable a Fiction but hazard nay loose their Lives and Fortunes in its defence And yet this was the case of the primitive Converts as I come now to demonstrate by a review of particulars § XVIII Now as for the reality of the matter of Fact the speedy entertainment of Christianity in all parts of the World that is a thing so unanimously attested by all Writers that it is rather to be supposed than proved 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Gospel of our Saviour like the Sun enlightned all the World at once and infinite multitudes of People both from Cities and Villages were by the Apostles preaching brought into the Church like Corn crowded into a Granary And they who had been long enslaved to the Superstition and Idolatry of their Ancestours were set at liberty by the preaching and miracles of the Disciples of Christ and renouncing that rout of false Gods that the merciless Daemons had introduced into the heathen World return'd to the worship of the onely one true God the great Creatour of all things So when Celsus objects the novelty of Christianity Origen answers that there lyes the wonder that in so short a time a new Doctrine should so strangely prevail over all the World conquer both Greeks and Barbarians the learned and unlearned all ranks and professions of Men and possess them with so firm a belief of its Divine Authority as to be ready to seal their Faith with their Bloud a thing that was never done for any Opinion in the World before And so Justin Martyr in his Conference with Trypho the Jew affirms that there is no part of Mankind Greeks or Barbarians nay not those wild and uncivilized People that were wont to live without Houses and Cities amongst whom Prayers and Supplications were not made to the Father and Creatour of all things in the name of the crucified Jesus It is an excellent passage of Clemens Alexandrinus to the same purpose at the end of his Sixth Book of Collections The Philosophers says he pleased the Greeks alone neither did every one please all Plato followed Socrates Xenocrates Plato Theophrastus Aristotle Cleanthes Zeno every Master had his own particular School and Scholars but our great Master's Philosophy was not confin'd as theirs was to their own Country within Judaea alone but spread it self over all parts of the habitable World and was entertain'd by whole Cities and Nations both of Greeks and Barbarians it bore away whole Families and Villages and no single Person could resist its force that would but give himself leave to hear its Wisedom insomuch that it gain'd over many of the Philosophers themselves And if any Magistrate did any where suppress the Grecian Philosophy it soon vanisht whereas our Institution from the first publishing of it has been every where persecuted by Kings and Emperours and Tyrants by Presects of Provinces by Commanders of Armies and which is more furious then all the rest by the Multitude These have join'd all their power and their malice utterly to extirpate our Religion but still it flourishes more and more and does not wither away as it must have done had it been a meer humane Invention but it stands invincible as the power of God that nothing can restrain or alter and this notwithstanding that it was foretold by the Founder of it that all its Followers must suffer Persecution And Tertullian assures the Senate of Rome that the Christians had fill'd all Places and all Offices that they were of strength enough to master the Roman Empire nay that so great were their numbers that if they would but agree to retire out of it the World would stand amazed at its own solitude And in his Book against the Jews he tells them that it enlarged its conquests beyond those of the Roman Empire that it subdued those places that were inaccessible to their Armies and reckons up multitudes of People from one end of the habitable World to the other that were converted to the Faith of the crucified Jesus And in the same manner does Arnobius challenge the unbelieving World Methinks says he this should not a little shock your unbelief to see the Authority of this despised name to prevail in all places in so short a time that no Nation is so utterly barbarous and lost to all civility whose manners have not been reform'd and polisht by this gentle Institution nay more than this it has master'd the great Wits the Oratours Criticks Lawyers Physicians and Philosophers and not onely so but all its Disciples are so serious and sincere in their profession that they will forgo all advantages of Life even Life it self rather than forsake the cross So that notwithstanding all your Laws and Interdicts your Threatnings and Executions your Hangmen and Dragg hooks and all your innumerable ways of torture they grow not onely more numerous but more
vigorous in their resolutions Can you think all this comes to pass slightly and by chance that Men do not consider what they are about when they dye for their Religion that there is a conspiracy of Sots and Mad-men all the World over to undoe themselves and throw away their Lives without so much as thinking what they are doing It were endless to heap up all the Testimonies that might be collected out of the primitive Writers upon this Argument when it was so known and confessed a thing even by the Enemies of the Religion So that this was the ground of Pliny's Letter to the Emperour concerning the Christians the multitude of Persons of all conditions which he says was so great that the Temples and Sacrifices were almost utterly forsaken And Tacitus tells us of an Ingens multitudo that were put to death by Nero in Rome alone for firing the City which was not much above thirty years after our Saviour's Passion and in the time of the Apostles some of whom suffer'd in the Persecution in short the prevalency of the Christian Religion was so observable among the Heathens that it was vulgarly styled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the prevailing Doctrine and they the prevailing Sect several Instances whereof are collected by Valesius out of Damascius Porphyry and Julian And therefore I will add no more Testimonies to prove a thing so unquestionable but shall onely rescue one that is more ancient than any of the rest from that violence that has been offer'd to it by some learned Men and that is the Testimony of Philo the Jew for whereas in his little Treatise concerning a Contemplative Lise he gives a large description of a certain Sect of Men and Women that he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that were at that time very famous and numerous in the World especially in Egypt and about Alexandria where he chiefly resided but most of all in the Mareotick Prefecture this Eusebius will have to be understood of the primitive Christians and that for this one very good reason because it is such an exact description of their way of Life Worship and Discipline that if Philo had design'd to have done that he could not have done it more accurately and the truth is there is scarce in all the Records of Antiquity a fuller account of the manners of the primitive Christians as to their renouncing the World for the love of Heaven their parting with their Estates for the benefit of the Poor their great Temperance and Chastity their meeting every Seventh-day for religious Worship their Love-feasts their great Festivals of Easter and Pentecost c. All which as they agree in every circumstance to the primitive Christians so to no other Sect of which we find any other memory or mention in all the Records of Antiquity and that one would think were Argument sufficient to conclude that Philo's description appertain'd to them and none else But Scaliger according to his usual custom of quarrelling with Eusebius will not have it applied to the Christians but to the Jewish Essenes of which he affirms there were two sorts the Practical and the Speculative and that in the former Book Philo treated of those of these in this And the ground of his mistake was Philo's transition from the first to the second Book viz. That having in the former given an account of the Essenes who lived a practical Life and conversed in Cities he now came to treat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of those that live a contemplative Life i. e. says Scaliger of those Essenes but that without any ground from the words themselves which being onely general of those Men that live a contemplative Life may with as much reason be understood of any other Sect as appropriated to the Essenes But what if Philo had call'd them Essenes and thought them so yet there is no necessity they should hà ve been so for seeing the Essenes were accounted Men of the strictest Lives among the Jews when Philo saw this Society of Christians then newly founded by Saint Mark in those parts that so much resembled the Essenes in their Manners and Discipline it was easie for him to suppose them a branch of the same Sect and pass them under the same name And yet after all this is a distinction meerly of Scaliger's own framing to salve his own groundless conjecture for Philo no where calls them Essenes which he would have done if Essenes they had been of what sort soever and therefore constantly giving those in the former Book the Title of Essenes and never giving it to these it is plain that they were of a different Sect from all Essenes Neither are there any the least footsteps of these two sorts of Essenes in all Antiquity and Josephus though he does more than once give an account of this Sect makes no mention of these speculative Essenes which so diligent a Writer could never have omitted if they had been so famous and so numerous in the World as Philo says these Therapeutae were Beside that there were no Essenes out of Judaea as Philo himself more than once informs us and expresly in the former Book whereas this Sect was spread as he affirms in this through all parts of the World Neither were there any Women admitted among the Essenes whereas both Sexes were indifferently enter'd into this Sect from whence it is evident that it must have been of a different Constitution And for these reasons Valesius disagrees with Scaliger for understanding the Essenes here yet agrees with him for not understanding the Christians but upon Arguments so weak and unconcluding that he had as good gone through with him in the whole matter as leave him half way to so little purpose As first That these Therapeutae read the ancient Writings of the Authours of their Sect which could not be understood of the old Prophets because they are expresly distinguisht by Philo from them nor of the Evangelists and Apostles because himself lived in their time and therefore could not term their Writings ancient But in answer to this it is evident that Philo was not thoroughly acquainted with the Principles of this Sect but had onely been present sometime at their Assemblies and from what he had there observed had drawn up this description of them And therefore finding that they had peculiar Books to themselves and distinct from those of the old Prophets he might easily think them more ancient than really they were especially when they were valued by the Christians or the Men that he speaks of as the most authentick Commentaries and Expositions of the Prophets themselves But however Antiquity is a relative term and therefore the Writings of the Evangelists and Apostles being the first Records of the Church might nay must be term'd the most ancient and so Philo seems to expound himself when he adds that they were such as
unquestionable proofs in the World § XX. This is the first invincible Impediment of Christianity supposing it had been false but whether true or false it labour'd under many other great disadvantages that it could never have surmounted but by the irresistible evidence and certainty of its truth And the first is its contrariety to the Vice and Wickedness of that Age in which it was first divulged The World being at that time as is evident from the Records that are left of it extreamly debaucht both in its Manners and Principles For Julius Caesar having violated all the Laws of his Countrey and overthrown the old Government that had always kept up a generous sense of Vertue and Integrity and by that means chiefly raised it self to that vast Greatness that afterwards so much exposed it to the attempts of ambitious Men. For though that spirit began to work in the time of Marius and passed down through all the great Men Cinna Sulla and Pompey all of them struggling for the sole Sovereignty of so vast an Empire the design was never compleatly compassed but by the boldness and activity of Julius Caesar. Now the success of the Caesarean Faction that were generally Atheists and Epicureans against the Patriots of the old State that were as generally eminent for Worth and Honour Vertue and Integrity and Zeal for the publick Good made the thriving Principles and Practices quickly come into Fashion and Reputation with the World And after the Death of Brutus we find no such thing as an ancient Roman but what he said in passion was seriously and universally embraced as a great truth That Vertue was nothing but an empty name So that if we survey the Roman History before and after the Usurpation of Caesar it does not look like the History of the same Nation the former abounding with the bravest examples of Gallantry and Magnanimity whereas in the latter we are generally entertain'd with no other politicks than Fraud and Treachery Even the admired wisedom of the great Augustus himself was no better than craft and dissimulation And though his Successour Tiberius be particularly remarqued for that Vice it was onely because he was not able to act his part so artificially as his Predecessour had done who dyed with that particular comfort to himself that he had so skilfully played the Comedy of humane Life and certainly of all Princes upon Record he had the most subtile faculty of appearing highly honest without any design of ever being so In short under his Reign all the Principles of Atheism and Impiety were prevalent in the Court of Rome that then prescribed Manners to the best part of the then known World neither were their Practices disagreeing to their Principles for as they cast off all restraints of Vertue and Modesty so they entirely devoted themselves to Luxury and Sensuality and studied nothing else than to emprove their bruitish Pleasures to the utmost extravagance of Enjoyment And as was the great Court of Rome so were all the other lesser Courts of their several Prefects and Governours And that not onely by imitation but by the natural baseness of the Men themselves Scarce any but the worst of Men that is Epicureans and Vilains by Principle being prefer'd by J. Caesar to Authority in the Empire though things grew much worse under the Tyranny of Mark Anthony a Man kneaded up of Lust and Malice and the onely reason why he was not more of each was because he was all both for he would never unless for the sake of his Lust quit his Cruelty nor ever unless to satisfie his Cruelty forsake his Lust and as himself was made up of all manner of Baseness so he would advance none to preferment but such as had recommended themselves to his good liking by their more than ordinary Wickedness And for that reason it was that Judaea and the parts about it were at that time more over-run with Vice and Debauchery than in any former Age in that Herod one of the vilest Men that ever lived had by the patronage of Mark Anthony obtain'd their Government and by a long Reign over them after his Patron 's Death under Augustus had familiarised all manner of the most licentious Wickedness to the People even so much that one half of the leading Men even among the Jews themselves that had been so famous through all Ages for their reverence to their Religion were no better than open and avowed Atheists Now how was it possible for such a Doctrine as Christianity that consists of Precepts of Chastity and Sobriety of Truth and Honesty of Kindness and Charity and of renouncing the Pleasures of this Life for the Rewards of another to make its way into such a wicked World as this Men of atheistical Principles are of all others the most stubborn and inflexible they scorn all manner of better Information and will not endure to enquire into the truth of any thing that might possibly undeceive them so that there is no way to overcome Persons so prejudiced and so conceited unless we can by the meer evidence of things force them into conviction And as for Men of luxurious Lives they have neither Mind nor Leisure to attend to any thing that may reclaim them It is Pain to them to think of parting with their Pleasures they will labour to preserve them upon any terms and as long as they are able to resist no information shall be able to fasten on them and therefore when the Christian Religion so suddenly reformed infinite numbers from all sorts of Vices it must have brought along with it a real Evidence equal to its pretended Authority for as it pretended to a Divine Commission by virtue whereof it required strict Obedience to all its Commands so it must have proved the reality of its Commission by such certain Evidence that it was not possible for the most refractory Persons to withstand its force and therefore when we find such multitudes so wonderfully prevail'd upon to quit their most beloved Lusts and Vices we have reason from thence onely to conclude that they were more than convinced of the undeniable truth of its pretences § XXI The next disadvantage of Christianity was its bold and open defiance to the establisht and inveterate Religions of the World For of all prejudices those of Religion are the strongest and the older they are the deeper root they take And therefore when its Enemies could plead the antiquity of many hundred years against it it could not but be a very difficult task to perswade them out of such an ancient Prescription It s meer Novelty was an Objection of no small force but when a new and upstart Religion would not be content with its own Authority but must disgrace all the settled Religions in the World and refuse its own settlement unless they may be utterly extirpated this could not but seem too sawcy a demand especially to Princes and great Men to require of them not onely
to set about such an Undertaking to reverse all the ancient Laws and Religions in the World and to introduce every where not onely a different but a contrary state of things These things says he if they should have objected he could have return'd them no other answer had he not prevented the Objection by the promise of his miraculous Assistance And therefore when they were obedient to his command it is evident that they were already by his Divine Works convinced of his Divine Authority For that they believed in him must be granted in that they so readily obeyed him in a little time leaving their own native Country to instruct the World in the Faith of Jesus and soon saw the promise of his Divine Assistance not onely made good but abundantly exceeded by their incredible success But when they went about such a Work as this after what manner think you did they address themselves to the People Did they go into the Market-place and there summon up an Auditory of all Passengers or did they apply themselves to particular Persons Take which you please I pray which way did they win their Attention when they began their Story at the most ignominious Death of their Master whom they set forth as the onely Instructour of Mankind the Son of God and Saviour of the World For if they had conceal'd that part of his History that related to his Passion and Sufferings and onely trumpeted out his great Vertues and much greater Miracles it had been very difficult to overcome the Faith of Mankind to a report so very strange and in it self incredible And yet if they had done this they might have kept their Story within some bounds of probability But when they acknowledged that the same Person whom they magnified as a God lived like a miserable Man encountred perpetual Affronts and Contumelies and at last suffer'd the Death of the worst and most ignominious Malefactours who that heard them would not laugh at the gross contradiction of their own Story Or at least how could any Man be so credulous as upon the bare report of unknown Persons to believe that a Person so shamefully executed should be so conspicuously risen from the dead and ascended into Heaven when he was not able to rescue himself from so dishonourable an Execution However who could have been so easie as to forsake the Religion of their Countrey and that way of Worship that had been used as they believed from the beginning of the World by the meer Authority of a company of mean and ignorant Mechanicks and a crucified Malefactour who notwithstanding his contemptible Life and dishonourable Death would bear himself out as the onely Son of God While says he I revolve these things in my Mind and consider the improbability of the Story in it self I cannot imagine how it is possible meerly by their own bare report to prevail upon the Faith of any one Man And yet when I reflect upon the strange Effect of their Endeavours and that such despicable Persons as they were in themselves should prevail upon such innumerable multitudes of Men and that not in barbarous and obscure places onely but in the most famous Cities of Rome Alexandria Antiochia nay in all parts of the World Europe Asia and Africa I am forced to enquire into the rational Account of so strange an Event and find that nothing could ever have brought it about but a manifest Divine Power whereby they were able when they pleased as we find in their Records to work Miracles and that alone was more than enough to vanquish and subdue the minds of Men to their Authority For when they saw their Miracles they could not but be concern'd to enquire by what Means they wrought such Effects And when they were told that they were empower'd by Jesus and did whatever they did by virtue of his Authority that alone over-ruled their Minds and without farther proof commanded entire submission to his Doctrine So that it was not the evidence of the thing it self nor the credit of their Testimony but the undeniable power of God discovering it self in their miraculous Actions that so easily subdued the World before them And it is impossible as Origen observes that the Apostles of our Lord without these miraculous Powers should ever have been able to have moved their Auditours or perswaded them to desert the Institutions of their Countrey and embrace their new Doctrine and having once embraced it to defend it to the death and defie all manner of dangers in its defence But then as it was impossible to have wrought this wonderfull change in the World without these miraculous Powers so with them it was impossible for Men to withstand so clear a demonstration of Divine Authority And therefore they did not so properly convert the World by their Preaching as by their Actions whilst they perform'd such things as though they themselves had never opened their Minds proclaim'd their Divine Commission And when People were once convinced of that little perswasion would serve the turn to engage them to the belief of that Doctrine which by their works they had already proved to be of Divine Authority And this if we consult the Apostolical History was the usual method of their proceeding first to shew a Miracle and then to declare its meaning Thus the first time that they appeared in publick after their Commission to preach the Gospel to the utmost parts of the Earth was at the great Festival of Pentecost when Proselytes of all Nations resorted to Jerusalem to whom they preached in their several Languages and this being noised abroad that a few illiterate Fishermen were all on a sudden inspired with the gift of speaking all the Languages of the known and habitable World curiosity brought great multitudes to hear them and when the multitude was convinced of and amased at the Miracle then was it a proper time for Saint Peter to begin his Sermon of the Resurrection of Jesus and prove it by their own Testimony This Jesus hath God raised up whereof we are all Witnesses That is we that are as you see endued with this miraculous gift of speaking all Languages in order to our preaching in the name of Jesus to all Nations do here assure you that we were no less than Eye-witnesses of his Resurrection And there lay the main strength and efficacy of Saint Peter's Sermon it was the Miracle that so soon converted thousands to his Doctrine So again when it was blazon'd abroad that the famous Cripple that was so well known to every Boy in the City to have kept for so many years together his begging stage at the chief Gate of the Temple styled Beautifull because made as Josephus informs us of Corinthian Brass was so miraculously healed by one of the company onely by a word speaking this could not but enflame their curiosity and every Man was concern'd to satisfie himself in the truth or falshood of a report
and not onely offer to cast the whole Controversie upon this one proof but their Lives too Now all this they could never have been so foolish or so impudent to have done if it had not been true or if they were they could not have escaped that disgrace that was due to their folly and impudence And yet they were so far from being ever convicted of forgery that it was chiefly by virtue of these challenges that the Christian Faith so wonderfully prevail'd in all places Many and pregnant are the passages to this purpose in the Writings of Just in Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian Saint Cyprian Saint Austin Origen Arnobius Lactantius Minutius Felix Prudentius Firmicus and indeed all that appear'd in defence of the Christian Faith in the first Ages of the Church and though most of them have been often alledged by modern Authours yet being of a peculiar use as to my Argument when join'd to the Apostolical Miracles it will be very requisite to represent at one view the most material passages to this purpose I begin with Just in Martyr who lived in the next Age to the Apostles who tells the Emperour and Senate that they may if they please inform themselves of our Lord's power over their Demons by what was daily done under their own eyes when so many who had been tortur'd and possessed by them throughout the whole World and in the very City of Rome it self whom all their several kinds of Exorcists were not able to relieve had been often cured by Christians through the name of Jesus that was crucified under Pontius Pilate and that at this very time they still cured them And the same thing he frequently upbraids to Trypho the Jew in their personal Conference which had it been a meer Fable he could never have done with so much confidence or if he had he could not have passed without confutation especially when in a short time after he published it to the World And in the same Age Irenaeus proves against the Hereticks the right succession of the Catholick Church to the Apostles from their power of working the same Miracles as casting out Devils foretelling things to come curing the Sick by imposition of hands and raising the Dead many whereof he says conversed among them many years after beside innumerable other Gifts which the Church throughout the World does every day freely exercise in the name of Jesus Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate for the benefit of Mankind But Tertullian as his manner is speaks very daringly for having convinced the Heathens of their folly in worshipping their Gods by Argument he challenges them to doe it by matter of Fact Set says he before your publick Seats of Judgment any person possessed as you suppose by some Demon and there let any Christian onely command him to confess what he is and the Spirit shall as certainly acknowledge himself to be a Devil as at other times he confidently pretends to be a God Nay take any person that you suppose inspired by any of your greatest Deities be it Ceres or AEsculapius and if they do not confess themselves to be Devils not daring to lie to a Christian let that foolish Christian that undertakes it and fails of doing it pay for his confidence with his bloud What can be more evident than this matter of fact What more satisfactory than this kind of proof The certainty of the truth lies before you it s own power will maintain it self for it is a ridieulous thing to suspect that this can be done by any magick tricks believe not one word that I say if your own Eyes and Ears do not force you to it What a bold challenge is here to appeal to the Senses of their Enemies and that with the hazard and pawn of their Lives It is such an height of assurance as I think nothing can exceed though his appeal to Scapula seems to equal it when he refers him to the Officers of his own Court some of whose Servants had been healed by Christians but not to insist says he upon inferiour People I could name persons of Quality and Reputation that have been so cured and particularly Severus the Father of the Emperour Antoninus Caracalla who was so cured by Proculus whom he ever after highly esteemed and entertain'd him in his Court till his Death And to this he subjoins the Testimony of M. Aurelius concerning the Miracle of the Christian Souldiers in the German Expedition That when the Imperial Army was reduced to great streights and ready to perish through thirst and in that extremity of weakness forced to Battel by the Enemy the Christians by the power of their Prayers immediately drew down great showrs of Rain upon their own Camp and Thunder and Lightning upon the Enemies This he here urges upon the President Scapula as a thing vulgarly known and in his Apology to the Senate proves it by the Letters that the Emperour had not long before sent to themselves Which certainly he could never have been so presumptuous as to have done had there then been no such Letters extant and yet Scaliger to make it as doubtfull as he can has found out a very lean Conjecture viz. That Tertullian does not positively affirm the thing but onely says Si Literae M. Aurelii requirantur If you make search after the Letter of M. Aurelius from whence he infers that Tertullian himself never saw it because of his hypothetical way of expression But 't is a strange thing that so great a Critick as Scaliger should not know that there is no one form of Speech more vulgar with all kind of Writers than when they are most assured of any thing to express it hypothetically and thereby refer what themselves certainly know to the farther enquiry of others so that the most natural meaning of the words is this viz. As to this matter I need not take pains to satisfie you which you may do your selves if you please by examining the Emperour 's own Letter to your own House Neither is his suggestion much more weighty when he infers that this Letter was not extant in the time of Eusebius because if it had so diligent a Writer would have preserved a Copy of it And so it is very likely he would had it been extant in the Greek Tongue but being written in the Latin to which he was a stranger it lay out of the compass of his diligence Yes but says he it was the custom of Eusebius to translate Latin Monuments into the Greek Tongue as he has several passages out of Tertullian One would think that Eusebius had familiarly cited the Writings of Tertullian whereas he never quoted but one short Book of his and that is his Apology which it is very probable that Eusebius himself did not translate but made use of another's translation especially when it is plain by those few passages that he has made use of that it is very short of the usual care and
with them in their Atheistical Idolatry And this was the grand motive of all their persecutions against them in which they proceeded upon no other Article than that they refused to sacrifice to their Gods So that if the Heathen Religion were absurd and it is certain that nothing could be more so and if all their hatred to Christianity were founded meerly upon their zeal to that this gives a plain account of the unreasonableness of their opposing the Christian Faith notwithstanding the undeniable evidence of its Divinity And this I shall endeavour to prove as I have in the case of the Jews from the matter of Fact it self And thereby it will appear not onely that the Assertion is a probable but a certain truth and so will not onely answer but confute the Objection by proving that all the reason that Men had to oppose Christianity was their being grosly unreasonable And this I shall make good first as to publick Persecutions secondly private Oppositions The first Persecution was raised by Nero a Prince sufficiently branded for all manner of Folly and Wickedness but above all for his brutish and inhumane Cruelty and therefore it ought to be no wonder that a Person so barbarous to all Mankind even to his dearest Friends and nearest Relations should vent some of his fury upon the Christians But as bad as he was and I do not remember any Prince unless Caligula more wild and extravagant in his manners and will allow the truth of that Character which Suetonius gives of him It a degenerasse à suorum Virtutibus Neronem ut tamen Vitia cujusque quasi tradita ingenita retulerit That he lost all the Vertues of his Ancestours and retain'd all their Vices yet for all that I cannot but think him to have been painted a much greater Monster than he deserved I will indeed grant his Folly to have exceeded the ordinary rate of Madness especially his Vanity of Fidling Singing and acting of Plays for which he so highly valued himself and was so ridiculously flattered by others and for the glory of it neglected all Affairs of State left Rome to shew his skill in the Cities of Greece return'd home with triumphal Pomp in the habit of a Player and with the shews of all his Victories In short he was not so jealous of a Rival in the Empire as of a skilfull Comedian and at his fall was much more grieved to be upbraided with being a bad Fidler than a bad Emperour Neither was he less exorbitant in his Lust than in his Vanity and it was both together that so much exposed him to the publick scorn and hatred of the People But for the Vice of Cruelty wherewith he is so severely charged and of which no doubt he was highly guilty I cannot but think him overloaded by the Historians It was indeed a wild Paradox attempted by Cardan though wittily perform'd to write an Encomium of his great Vertues but above all his Clemency in which he will have him to have excelled the best of the Roman Emperours yet that he was not so bloudy as he is usually represented appears as by many other Acts of Mercy towards his Enemies so particularly as tender as he was of his Reputation by not punishing as most other Emperours were wont to doe the known Libellers against his Person and Government with capital Penalties And as for his other Severities this at least is to be pleaded in his behalf the prodigious and unparallel'd Wickedness of the Age that was so universally debauched that there was scarce a Man in it of reputation enough to give Testimony against him So that though he were both hated and condemned by the Senate it self yet the ground of the contention between them was who should have the greatest Empire in Wickedness and his restraint of their Enormities particularly their inhumane Extortion is no improbable account of their great displeasure against him And for this reason the number of his Executions is no proper Objection against his Government for that might come to pass not from his cruelty but from their own wicked practices and therefore nothing can be determin'd from that against him but by inquiring into the cause of those that suffer'd and unless it appear as it does not that they were falsely accused and unjustly condemned their being executed proves nothing either for or against him And as for his cutting off so many of his nearest Kindred the question is whether themselves forced him not to it in his own defence and if they did then it was not choice but necessity And whatever he did for reason of State was according to the practices of those times very allowable As for the Death of his Father Claudius there is no evidence that he had any hand in it that was wholly the Wickedness of Agrippina And though he seem'd too ungratefull to his memory by speaking reproachfully of him it is apparent that he was put upon it by the instigation of Seneca whom it seems that dull Emperour had disobliged As for Agrippina she was a Woman of intolerable Pride and unheard of Cruelty she had poison'd her Husband to derive the Crown upon her Son she had threatned to poison him and transfer it to Germanicus in short she would not suffer him to enjoy any share or any quiet in the Government Now what was to be done with a Woman of this temper Indeeed to kill her she being his Mother how wicked soever was inhumane and unnatural yet however her practices could not but force him to some undecent severity At least it is plain that at first he used her with due respect and bore her insolence with extraordinary patience till he saw both his Life and his Empire attempted and then it was but time to secure himself though he ought to have done it some gentler way than by putting her to Death In short if Agrippina were so bad as the Historians represent her to have been Nero was not because his cruel usage of her was in a great measure forced by her own wickedness As for Germanicus he must dye not onely as a declared Rival to the Empire but as the true and rightfull Heir of the Crown And this practice was grown so familiar that there was not an Emperour but either got the Crown or secured it by murther All which came to pass by the prodigious dotage of Augustus who after all his great craft instead of securing the Empire to his own nearest Kindred onely obliged his Successours to murther them for their own security For when he passed over the right Heirs to settle the Empire upon Tiberius it was obvious that Tiberius could never think himself secure in his Throne till all that had an antecedent right to it were removed out of the way So that the blame of Tiberius his Cruelty is in a great measure to be charged upon Augustus his Folly who by his preposterous settlement of the Crown upon him made it
illic reperietis primum Neronem in hanc sectam cum maximè Romae orientem Caesariano gladio ferocisse Sed tali dedicatore damnationis nostrae etiam gloriamur Qai enim scit illum intelligere potest non nisi grande aliquod bonum à Nerone damnatum Tentaverat Domitianus portio Neronis de crudelitate sed qua homo facile coeptum repressit restitatis etiam quos relegaverat If you search your own Records you will find that Nero was the first Emperour that imbrued his hands in Christian Blood but we glory in the hatred of such an Enemy as Nero for whoever knows the Man cannot but know that it must be some very great good thing that Nero hates And Domitian too a piece of the same cruelty made the same attempt but having in him either some little humanity or the inconstancy of Mankind for which of these Tertullian means by his qua homo is altogether ambiguous he desisted from his design and revoked his own proscriptions § XXXIX The Third Persecution hapned under the Reign of Trajan and was set on foot upon variety of designs all which were very remote from any fair Inquiry into the cause of Christianity it self The first was the old jealousie of our Saviour's Kindred and the Line of David and this as Hegesippus informs us was started by the Jews and the Gnosticks against Symeon the Son of Cleophas the Brother of Joseph then Bishop of Jerusalem and that at a time when all the Royal Family of Judah wer sought after and dispatched out of the way as pretended Rivals of the Empire And for this reason was this good Old man put to death in the Hundred and one and twentieth year of his Age. The Second motive of this Persecution was the Emperour's great jealousie of those Societies call'd Heteriae that had often created great mischief and trouble to the Empire and therefore for the prevention of such disturbances he strictly forbad all manner of associations and publick meetings and in this point of Government he was so peremptory that when Pliny moved him to erect a Corporation of Smiths at Nicomedia as a great convenience to the City he would by no means be induced to allow it Now the Assemblies of Christians being grown numerous they fell under the edge of this Law and it was accordingly executed against them by the Governours and Pro consuls in their several Provinces It is commonly supposed that this Edict against these Illegal Societies was published on purpose to ensnare the Christian Meetings and it is possible it might be so yet there is no ground for it in History but on the contrary it is manifest that this Emperour was possest with a particular jealousie against all kinds of Assemblies as appears in the foremention'd case of the Smiths of Nicomedia And that he had no particular design against the Christians is evident from his answer to Pliny's Letter by which he inform'd the Emperour how he had executed this Edict in his Province against them and what numbers he had punished for their obstinacy against the Law but having made enquiry into the design of their meetings he was sufficiently satisfied of the innocence of the men and therefore desires directions from him after what manner he should proceed against them or whether at all The Emperour upon this account that he received of the peaceableness of the Christians takes off the severity of his Edict against them and gives instructions that they should not be sought for as being really innocent yet if they were accused and Convicted they should be punished according to Law that is for the good example of Government This seems to have been all that Emperour's design in his Laws and Proceedings against the Christians otherwise certainly he would never have remitted the Execution of a Law of which he was so tender onely for their sakes But because this was the first Prosecution in which we meet with any thing like legal Proceedings against the Christians I shall give an account of all the unjust and unreasonable methods of procedure against them both in this and the following Persecutions and so without troubling the Reader with a distinct Narrative of every one give him a true State of the grounds and reasons of all and from thence it will evidently appear that they proceeded not upon any sober enquiry but were meerly driven on by brutish folly and madness The heads of their accusation then were either real or feigned the feigned were apparently the contrivances of malice and the real were as apparently the charges of folly as I shall shew in each particular The first and great charge of all was the Christians contempt of their Gods and Religion But here the cause of Paganism was so foul and brutish that it was the most dishonourable abuse that ever was put upon humane nature and were not the matter of fact undeniably evident it would have been incredible that Mankind should ever sink into such a senseless stupidity The Barbarous People whom the Greeks and Romans so much despised Worshipped onely the Heavenly Bodies but these Polite these Civilised these Philosophical Nations deified the worst of things and the worst of men and replenisht Heaven with such a rout of Deities as made it look more like a Jail full of Rogues and Villains than an Habitation of Gods and they relate such foul things of them that one would scarce believe such ill reports of the vilest of Men and if their Enemies would have set themselves to have contrived Stories that might render them odious and contemptible the blackest calumnies they could have fastned upon them must have fall'n short of the extravagance of their own Reports And as were their Gods such was their Worship too all lewdness and Debauchery and such things were acted in their Temples as were not allowed in the publick Stews The foulest uncleannesses were their highest Devotions How lascivious and obscene were the Ceremonies of Cibele Priapus Flora and Venus who were Worshipt with nothing but the vilest Lust and Wantonness So foul and beastly were the celebrated Mysteries of Bacchus that the Senate of Rome it self was at last forced to banish them out of Italy as the foulest example of Lust and Debauchery In short the prodigious Stories that they told of their greatest Deities Saturn Jupiter Ceres or the Mother of the Gods as much exceeded the wickedness of Mankind as Heaven is higher than the Earth Though the truth is they represented them much worse than they were whilst they made them work Miracles to compass their brutish ends for when all is done they were neither better nor worse than Mortal Men. Saturn and Jupiter were known Tyrants in Crete Apollo a common Fidler the Muses Servant Maids AEsculapius a Tooth drawer in Arcadia Venus a known Strumpet to Cinyras King of Cyprus not long before the Trojan War These and like these were the Gods they Worshipt and how this folly first
agrees exactly with all those other innumerable Records that I think I have proved unquestionable But if I am mistaken either in any of these or any other historical or chronological Nicities they are no more than the fringes of my Argument which is demonstrative either with or without them And now this being premised that the Reader take all matters of Fact as I have intended and represented them and lay the same stress upon them that I have done I will upon the perusal of the whole leave it to his own choice to make his own conclusion I am not ignorant that it is commonly lookt upon as an invidious thing for an Authour to seem to speak with any assurance of his own performance but for that I am not concern'd for I onely make use of my own liberty to judge of the nature and capacity of my Argument and leave others to theirs And as I would not be so vain as to overvalue so neither would I be so formal as to undervalue a Discourse onely because it is my own lest by this seeming and counterfeit modesty in my self I reflect but a scurvy and uncivil complement upon my Cause For Writers when all is done do not create their Topicks of Reasoning no more than Workers in the Mines do their Oar but onely dig up such Materials as the Vein will afford So that if I should pretend to less Evidence than my Cause has given me I should onely wrong that for I do not make but find it And therefore though I would not forestall my Reader 's Judgment much less upbraid his Ingenuity by pretending too confidently to demonstration but leave every Man to the result of his own impartial thoughts yet this I cannot but declare for my own part That the Evidence that the good Providence of God has given me of my Christian Faith is much greater than I could in reason have expected and I am sure much more than I should in modesty have desired And the satisfaction that upon a thorough Enquiry I have received is so very great that as much as I think my self obliged to the Goodness of the Divine Providence for the strange work of my Redemption I think my self not less obliged for the wonderfull and amasing Evidence that he has given me of it The security of the Gift is as valuable as the Gift it self For it is the certainty of our Title to good things that gives our Minds satisfaction in them And certainly it is the highest contentment that humane Nature is capable of to live not with a meer fluctuating Hope and unexamin'd Belief but a just and reasonable Assurance of immortal Happiness But if in this this following Discourse fall short of demonstration yet however I am ensured of its acceptance with all good Men from the goodness of its design which is to doe some honour to our dear Saviour and his Divine Religion And if by this Undertaking I have done any thing towards that it is enough and I may from this time forward as cheerfully as the good old Man did when he had his Saviour in his Arms sing my Nunc Dimittis THE CONTENTS PART I. A Demonstration of the Law of Nature from the Nature of Things and of the future State of Mankind from the Law of Nature § I. THE Enquiry after a Law of Nature supposes and depends upon the antecedent proof of an Authour of Nature pag. 1. § II. The Law of Nature not to be proved by Instincts and Notions within us but by the outward Appearances of Things p. 5. § III. The greater and the lesser Rules of Morality the greater evident to all the World the consent of Mankind as to their Obligation unknown to none without the most wilfull ignorance or most brutish stupidity The lesser are onely Rules of Decency one Direction about them all viz. To avoid unnatural imitations p. 9. § IV. All the Laws of Nature reduced to one Principle viz. Mutual Love and Kindness among all Mankind this demonstrated to be the will and intention of their Maker The absurdity of Mr. Hobbs's supposed state of War shewn though there were no Deity But if there be a Deity the Obligation of the Law of Nature unavoidable p. 17. § V. The end and design of Society its Divine Institution demonstrated The state of War shewn to be contradictory to humane Nature p. 25. § VI. The Divine Institution of Propriety and Dominion proved first from the limitedness of every Man's Nature secondly from its subserviency to the publick Good p. 35. § VII The Law of Nature made known and recommended to us from the constitution of all things within us First From the natural activity of the mind of Man p. 42. § VIII Secondly From that natural sense and desire that every Man has of his own Happiness p. 47. § IX Thirdly From some natural instincts and inclinations of humane Nature As First Conjunction of Sexes for propagation of the Kind Secondly The strength of natural Affection between Parents and Children Thirdly Natural Pity and Compassion Lastly From the Passion of Laughing p. 50. § X. All the particulars of the Argument recapitulated p. 57. § XI The Sanction of the Laws of Nature by natural Rewards and Penalties proved p. 60. § XII The first reward of Vertue is its own intrinsick pleasure and natural tendency to tranquility of Mind and health of Body p. 64. § XIII The second is the Conscience that a good Man has of his approving himself to the wisedom of the Divine Understanding and the acceptance of the Divine Will p. 69. § XIV The third is the endearment and recommendation of himself to the love and good-will of Mankind p. 74. § XV. The first natural Punishment of Injustice is the forfeiture of all other Mens Kindness The second is Insecurity The third is provoking the whole Society to endeavour his destruction in order to the publick Safety p. 79. § XVI As the Law of Nature follows upon the supposition of a Divine Providence so does the certainty of a future State upon the supposition of a Law of Nature in that without it it can never attain the end of its Institution and first because without it Mankind is utterly uncapable of Happiness this proved against all the Philosophers p. 84. § XVII And first against the Epicureans The Controversie with them stated not whether Pleasure be our sovereign Happiness but what Pleasure p. 88. § XVIII The meanness and foulness of Epicurus his Doctrine that all Happiness consists in sensual Pleasure proved against those several Apologies that are made to excuse it p. 91. § XIX There can be no Happiness in this Life if taken alone because of the fickleness and uncertainty of all its Enjoyments p. 96 § XX. The several prescriptions of Epicurus and Seneca against the miseries of Life shewn to be vain and trifling p. 99. § XXI The fear of Death proved an inevitable and insuperable misery of Life without the
hope of Immortality The vanity of Epicurus his great Antidote against the fear of Death viz. That Death cannot hurt us because when that is we are not p. 106. § XXII All the other Receits prescribed by the Philosophers against the fear of Death represented and exploded p. 113. § XXIII Without a future State no sufficient foundation for Vertue First Not for Temperance p. 120. § XXIV Secondly Not for Justice nor Magnanimity p. 124. § XXV The vanity of the stoical Philosophy represented upon its Principles neither Happiness nor Vertue without a future State p. 131. § XXVI An account of the Platonick and Peripatetick Morality out of Tully And first his consolatory Discourses in his first Book of Tusculane Questions against the fear of Death proved vain and ineffectual p. 139. § XXVII The same shewn of the Remedies prescribed in his second Book for the alleviating of Pain p. 147. § XXVIII The same shewn of the Prescriptions of the third and fourth Books against Grief and Trouble under the calamities of Life and all other perturbations of the Mind p. 151. § XXIX An account of the fifth Book where he forsakes the Peripatetick Philosophy as insufficient to his purpose and what good reasons he had so to doe p. 157. § XXX The defect of his own new way of philosophising proved in general p. 162. § XXXI That great and glorious Maxime of his Friend Brutus That Vertue is sufficient to its own Happiness proved to be a vain and empty saying without Immortality The Argument concluded p. 167. PART II. A Demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion from the undoubted Certainty of the Matter of Fact and the uninterrupted Tradition of the Church § I. THE great advantage of the Gospel above the Law of Nature pag. 175. § II. The Evidence and Certainty of the Christian Faith demonstrated from the infinite and intolerable Absurdities of Unbelief p. 179. § III. This particularly proved according to our Saviour's own Advice in the Article of his Resurrection p. 182. § IV. The impossibility of the Apostles being false in their Testimony of it demonstrated from the first Instinct of humane Nature love of Life and desire of Self-preservation p. 184. § V. The same proved from its contradiction to all the principles of Prudence and common Understanding p. 190. § VI. The same proved from its inconsistency with and contrariety to their own design in publishing Christianity to the World p. 193. § VII The undoubted Truth of the Scripture History if written by those Persons whose names it bears p. 199. § VIII That it could not be written by any other demonstratively proved p. 204. § IX The Books of the New Testament whose Authority was sometime disputed proved to be of Apostolical Antiquity p. 207. § X. Mr. Hobbs's Witticism against the Divine Authority of the Scriptures that the Canon was first compiled by the Council of Laodicea confuted p. 210. § XI The concurrence of Jews and Heathens with the Testimony of Christian Writers p. 112. § XII Josephus and Saint Luke reconciled about the Tax of Cyrenius and the Death of Herod Agrippa p. 215. § XIII The famous Testimony of Josephus concerning our Saviour vindicated from the exceptions of Tanaquil Faber and other Criticks p. 222. § XIV The Testimony of Phlegon concerning the Eclipse at the Passion asserted p. 229. § XV. Pontius Pilate his Narrative concerning our Saviour to Tiberius and Tiberius his Opinion of it cleared p. 230. § XVI The Story of Agbarus proved genuine p. 235. § XVII The impossibility of the Apostles prevailing upon the Faith of Mankind if their Story had been false p. 239. § XVIII The speedy propagation of Christianity in all parts of the World described Philo's Therapeutae proved to have been Christians p. 241. § XIX The first disadvantage of Christianity if it had been false its being a late matter of Fact p. 251. § XX. The second disadvantage of Christianity was its contrariety to the Atheism and the Luxury of the Age in which it was published p. 256. § XXI The third disadvantage of Christianity was its defiance to the establisht and inveterate Religions of the World both Jewish and Heathen p. 259. § XXII The wonderfull success of Christianity notwithstanding all other disadvantages not to be ascribed to any thing but the greatness of that rational Evidence that it gave of its Truth p. 263. § XXIII That the Apostles planted the Christian Faith with so much speed by the power of Miracles and that it was not possible to have done it any other way p. 266. § XXIV The continuance of the same power to the next following Ages asserted and with the greatest Assurance appeal'd to by all the Advocates of Christianity in their publick Writings p. 275. § XXV The vanity of the Objection of the Ancients against the Miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles that they were wrought by Magick p. 283. § XXVI The vanity of the Miracles opposed by the Heathens to our Saviour particularly that of Vespasian in curing the Lame and the Blind p. 287. § XXVII An account of the evident Imposture of Apollonius Tyanaeus from his own Historian Philostratus p. 293. § XXVIII The Evidence of the Christian Faith from meer humane Tradition and that first publick by the uninterrupted succession of Bishops in the chief Churches from the Apostles p. 300. § XXIX The same proved by private Tradition and first of Saint Clement Bishop of Rome p. 308. § XXX Secondly of Saint Ignatius with an account of himself and his Epistles p. 311. § XXXI Thirdly of Saint Policarp Pothinus and Papias The wisedom of the Ancients vindicated as to the Paschal Controversie p. 320. § XXXII Of Hegesippus The purity of the primitive Church vindicated against all Innovators And Hegesippus his History against the cavils of Scaliger p. 328. § XXXIII Of Justin Martyr Irenaeus and a great number more p. 338. § XXXIV The Objection from the Infidelity of great numbers of Men in that Age answered the first ground of the Infidelity of the Jews was their invincible Prejudice in honour of Moses p. 343. § XXXV Their second great Prejudice was their expectation of a great Temporal Prince for their Messias and how they were crossed in it by our Saviour p. 349. § XXXVI Atheism the ground of the Sadducees opposing Christianity and fanatick Pride and Arrogance of the Pharisees p. 357. § XXXVII The Heathens opposed Christianity for the sake of Idolatry The Neronian Persecution onely a trick of State to secure himself from the fury of the Multitude by delivering up the Christians to it p. 363. § XXXVIII Domitian's Persecution founded upon jealousie of State against the Line of David Hegesippus vindicated in his account of it against Scaliger The jealousie both of the Emperours and the Senate about the Messias p. 370. § XXXIX An account of the following Persecutions and of the injustice and unreasonableness of their several Proceedings against