this way of conveyance is insisted upon by the Ancients themselves in justification of the Catholick Truth both against Hereticks and Insidels Thus the Apostolical Tradition says Irenaeus is spread all the World over and this every Man that pleases may find in every Church and we are able to reckon up all those that were appointed by the Apostles to be their Successours and Bishops in the Churches of Christ down to our own time But because it would be too tedious in such a Discourse as this to enumerate the Succession of all Churches I shall onely instance in those great ancient and famous Churches that were founded at Rome by those two glorious Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul hereby to shew the Tradition of that Faith that was preached by the Apostles to have been safely conveyed by the Succession of Bishops down to our own time And I choose to exemplifie this thing in this Church rather than any other because of its great preheminence and resort from all parts of the World upon which account its Tradition must needs be more publick and better known The blessed Apostles therefore having laid the Foundations of the Church delivered the oversight of it to Linus of whom Saint Paul makes mention in his Epistle to Timothy to him succeeds Anacletus then Clemens who familiarly conversed with the Apostles and had their Preaching still sounding in his Ears and their Tradition before his Eyes In whose time there hapned a great Schism in the Church of Corinth to allay which the Church of Rome directed an excellent Epistle to them in which she exhorts them to Peace and Unity rubs up their memory of the primitive Faith and sets before them the fresh Tradition of the Apostles themselves To him succeeds Evaristus to Evaristus Alexander and then Sixtus Telesphorus Higinus Pius Anicetus Soter and now Eleutherius in the twelfth place from the Apostles This is a clear and an accurate account of the Apostolical Succession of that Church so that it is impossible to understand how there should ever have been a Bishop in it unless we begin the Succession from the Apostles and then this is an undeniable proof of the certainty of their Tradition as in all other places so particularly in that great and populous City And this very Argument Epiphanius insists upon against the Carpocratians And let no Man wonder says he that I so accurately and carefully set down every single Person in the Succession because hereby the undoubted truth that has been from the beginning will evidently appear And the truth is granting the Succession it would be a pretty hard task to avoid the Tradition and yet against that there lies onely one poor exception viz. That some ancient Writers place Clement in the first place who here stands in the third but that to pass by many other conjectures and especially a very probable one of Epiphanius is clear'd by one that is more than probable and founded upon the Authority of the Ancients themselves that there were at first two Churches at Rome one of the Circumcision over which Saint Peter presided another of the Uncircumcision founded and govern'd by Saint Paul who as we reade in the last Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles left the obstinate Jews to preach to the Gentiles neither is this conjecture a little confirm'd by this very passage of Irenaeus who speaks not of the Church of Rome as a single Church but as two distinct and those eminent Churches from the beginning so that though Clement were immediate Successour in one of them yet he might be the third in the other in that surviving Linus and Cletus and the difference between Jew and Gentile being in a great measure worn away both Churches might naturally unite into one Body under his Jurisdiction Others object to mudd the succession that some Writers place both Cletus and Anacletus before Clemens as if they were distinct Persons But this is a mistake of later Writers who sometimes finding these different names in the Copies of the ancient Books concluded them different Persons but herein they go against the Authority of all the ancient Writers themselves and particularly of Eusebius whose account ought to be valued beyond all others because he collected the succession of Bishops out of the Archives and Diptychs of the Churches themselves to which he particularly refers in the succession of the Church of Jerusalem So that here is no real difficulty or labyrinth as to the succession and all that seems to be is onely occasion'd by an easie and obvious mistake of some later Writers against the more ancient and unquestionable Authority After the same manner does Tertullian triumph over the Hereticks by challenging them to prescribe for their Opinions from the beginning as the Catholicks were able to doe for theirs The truth says he will appear from its Antiquity that is true and delivered by the Lord himself that we find most ancient but that is foreign and false that was brought in afterwards and if they shall dare to pretend to the Apostolical Age let them produce the Originals of the Churches let them describe the succession of their Bishops and so derive it from the beginning as that the first Bishop should have succeeded to some Apostle or some Apostolical Man that conversed with the Apostles For in this way it is that the Apostolical Churches prove their Original as the Church of Smyrna will produce Policarp placed there by Saint John the Church of Rome Clement ordain'd by Saint Peter and so for all other Churches they shew you the Men that were settled in their Episcopal Office by the Apostles themselves and conveyed down their Doctrine to Posterity And again this is the onely Testimony of the truth its possession from the beginning and for this you that are concern'd to enquire more diligently after your Salvation may travel over the Apostolical Churches where the very seats in which the Apostles presided are still remaining where their own authentick Letters are still extant Do you live in or near to Achaia go to Corinth In Macedonia to Philippi or Thessalonica In Asia to Ephesus In Italy to Rome And this certainly as it was sufficient to prescribe to all the Innovations of the Hereticks so was it to demonstrate the undoubted truth and certainty of the Christian Religion when it was so clearly and so uninterruptedly deliver'd down from the first Founders of it And the truth is the succession of Bishops in the principal Churches was so accurately recorded by the Ancients that it had never been so much as call'd in question had not some Men been forced to it onely to justifie themselves in their departing from it it having been the custom of all but especially the most famous Churches to keep an exact Register of the Names and the Deaths of their Bishops which they call'd Diptychs and though it is objected that these Records are now lost and so are
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
the Tables of the Consuls yet they were very carefully preserved in those times and as easily consulted by any inquisitive Person as any other publick Record and were so by all learned Men who made it their business to enquire into them or to convey the account of them to after-ages and particularly Eusebius who as he made use of many other helps and had all the other advantages of information would not want this that was so easie and so satisfactory as himself particularly informs us concerning the succession of Jerusalem that he transcribed it out of their own Archives Though setting aside the information that he received thence the History of the succession is sufficiently preserved by other Writers That of Rome is already cleared that of Antioch is as clear onely some Men are willing to raise a dispute about the immediate Successour to the Apostles whether it were Euodius or Ignatius probably it might be both as it was at Rome but if Euodius were the first it is enough that his Successour Ignatius was an Apostolical Man and familiarly acquainted with the Apostles and that from him the succession runs clear and undisputed down to the Council of Nice to which Eustathius its then present Bishop was summon'd and as he was a Man of eminent learning so he bore a considerable sway in it As for Alexandria the succession runs so clear there that I do not find that the most sceptical Adversaries in this point dare so much as question it and indeed the succession of learned Men in that Church was so early and so uninterrupted that it was no more possible for them to be ignorant of the succession of their Bishops than it is for any learned Man now not to know the succession in the See of Canterbury from the Reign of Queen Elizabeth To these it were easie to add many more if it were not too tedious but though I do not meet with any reasonable suspicion of an interrupted succession in any eminent Church yet I shall instance onely in two that next to those already mention'd most deserve our notice that is the Churches of Corinth and Athens an account of whose succession we have from Dionysius a learned Man and Bishop of Corinth in the time of M. Antoninus as indeed we have of many other Churches in his Epistles to them as for his own Church it were a vain thing to demand a particular account of its succession when himself was so near the fountain head and has withall accidentally let us understand his knowledge of what was transacted there before his own time and particularly by his account of Saint Clement's Epistle As for the Church of Athens he expresly affirms that Dionysius the Areopagite was their first Bishop and after him mentions Publius and Quadratus so that it was not possible there should be any unknown interruption in so short an interval This may suffice for a brief specimen of the certain succession in the most eminent Churches from the Apostles and by consequence of their undoubted Tradition § XXIX The next part of the Argument is to prove its more particular conveyance down from the very time of the Apostles through the hands of a great many wise and learned Men And for this reason it was that Clemens Alexandrinus after he had passed through the Discipline of several Masters and several Sects acquiesced at last without any farther search in the Christian Institution because they that preserved the Tradition of this heavenly Doctrine received it immediately from Peter James and John and Paul the holy Apostles as a Son succeeds a Father and by the Providence of God have brought it down to us planting those seeds of Doctrine which they derived from their Ancestours and the Apostles And it is a very good reason and becoming the wisedom of that learned Man supposing the matter of Fact to be true and that it is is evident from the succession it self in that the first Witnesses of Christianity next to the Apostles familiarly conversed with the Apostles themselves or with Apostolical Men. As Saint Clemens Bishop of Rome who wrote an excellent Epistle to the Church of Corinth received with great veneration in the Christian Church valued next to the holy Scriptures and therefore read with them in several Churches but especially the Church of Corinth And as it was the most ancient next to the Apostolical Books so was it the most undoubted Writing of the Christian Church it was says Eusebius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 received without controversie And it is cited by Dionysius Bishop of Corinth a short time after who affirms that it was then read in that Church every Lord's Day It is magnified by Irenaeus not onely for its own strength and piety but for the primitive Antiquity of its Authour who he says was conversant with the Apostles received his Christianity from them had their preaching still fresh in his memory and their customs and traditions in his eye as divers others there were then living that were taught by the Apostles themselves And Clemens Alexandrinus quoting this Epistle as he often does gives him the Title of Apostle for his primitive Antiquity But beside that it was unanimously attested by the Ancients it was never call'd in question by any of our modern Criticks who though they have taken infinite pains to destroy or impair as much as in them lay the credit of all the ancient monuments of the Church yet have passed this Epistle as undoubtedly genuine with an unanimous approbation Now this supposes the owning and the settlement of the Christian Religion in the World it asserts particularly the truth and certainty of our Saviour's Resurrection and beside several other Books of the New Testament quotes the first Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians in which the Apostle proves its undoubted certainty by the Testimony not onely of himself and the Apostles but of above five hundred Witnesses beside most whereof were then alive Beside this he tells us of the great labours and martyrdoms of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in asserting the Christian Faith and the great patience and constancy of vast numbers more for the same cause and this he speaks of as a thing present Let us says he consider the generous and worthy Examples of our own Age through emulation and envy the faithfull Pillars of the Church were persecuted even unto a most grievous Death Let us place before our Eyes our holy Apostles and so he proceeds to the acts and sufferings of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Now how could this have been done at that time if Christianity had been a meer Fable or what more unquestionable Tradition can we have of its truth especially of the Resurrection when he quotes the Gospels in which it is recorded the Epistle of Saint Paul in which it is proved by such a number of Eye-witnesses the Testimony of the Apostles and innumerable others that lived at the
very point of his dissolution as his Legacy to the Christian Church communicated to several Churches publickly and vulgarly known attested by Saint Policarp Irenaeus Clemens of Alexandria and not long since by Origen 't is not possible that all the Copies of such a Writing as this should be lost about one and the same time and that a false one should immediately rise up in their stead and that Eusebius a Man so familiarly acquainted with the choicest Libraries of that part of the World should embrace so late and so gross a Forgery and put the mistake upon all learned Men that followed after him The Man that can satisfie himself with such wild surmises and suppositions as these there is nothing so absurd but he may easily swallow its belief nor so demonstratively proved but he may withstand its evidence Now the Authority of these Epistles being vindicated and I am apt to think that they will never more be call'd in question they are a brave and generous Assertion of the truth of the Christian Faith being written with that mighty assurance of Mind that shews the Authour of them to have had an absolute certainty or a kind of an infallible knowledge of the things that he believed In every Epistle his Faith is resolved into that undoubted evidence that he had of our Saviour's Death and Resurrection and particularly in that to the Church of Smyrna he protests that he could no more doubt of its reality than of his own chains and again positively affirms that he knew it to be true And yet not withstanding that all the ancient Copies and all the quotations of the Ancients out of him agree in this sense that he knew Jesus to be in the flesh after his death because in Saint Jerom's Translation who excuses himself for the haste and carelesness of the work it is rendred that he saw Jesus in the flesh this is made use of by the learned Men of our new Church of Geneva as a sufficient Objection to overthrow the Authority of all these Epistles It is possible indeed he might have seen Jesus in the flesh but it is not probable neither is it his design to affirm it in this place seeing he proves its truth from the Testimony of the Apostles as Eye-witnesses and not from his own immediate knowledge but when he onely says that from them he knew it to be true to put this assertion upon him that he saw it with his own eyes against the reading of all the ancient Books from a careless Translation proves nothing but the invincible stubbornness of prejudice and partiality But the truth is these Men have been so zealous for their Faction as not to care how in pursuit of it they endanger'd nay destroyed their Religion For whereas one of the greatest Pillars of the Christian Faith is the Testimony of the Ancients in the Age next to the Apostles in that it is hereby particularly proved that it is no figment of an unknown time and that the Records of it were of that Antiquity that they pretend to be yet because they do as positively assert the original Constitution of the Christian Church which this faction of Men have hapned to renounce they have labour'd with indefatigable industry utterly to overthrow all their Authority but thanks be to God with that ill success that by their endeavour to shake our Faith they have onely made it to take the better root for by this occasion the most ancient Tradition of the primitive Church has been much more inquired into and better clear'd than if it had passed without any dispute or contradictition But to keep close to our Ignatius what has been the bottom of all the zeal and fury against his Epistles but his earnest pressing all good Christians to submit to the government of the Church as to the Ordinance of God or rather because he describes the Constitution of the primitive Platform so accurately as to condemn their Discipline of folly and rashness in departing from the prescription of God himself And yet all the ancient Doctours of the Church have done the same thing laying as great a stress as he has done upon the duty of Obedience to their Ecclesiastical Governours as set over them by Divine Institution For as there was nothing of which they were then more tender than the Peace and Unity of the Church so they thought it could be no other way preserved than by submission to those Guides and Governours that Christ had set over it This it were easie to make evident out of their Writings especially Saint Cyprian's who as he was a Person of very great prudence and discretion so is he full as peremptory in this point as Ignatius But I shall onely instance in the Epistle of Saint Clement because of its greater Antiquity For if that assert a certain form of Church government establisht by our Saviour and observed by the Apostles that prevents and confutes the groundless conjecture of an unknown time immediately after the Apostles in which the whole power of the Church devolved upon the Presbyters because they had appointed no one particular and perpetual form of Government And this Saint Clement asserts in these positive words The Apostles were appointed to preach the Gospel to us from our Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ from God himself Christ being sent by God and the Apostles by him the sending of both was in an orderly manner after the will of God For the Apostles receiving their command and having a full confidence through the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and faith in the word of God with an assurance of the Holy Spirit went forth publishing the Gospel of the Kingdom of God which was erecting They therefore preached the Word through divers Countries and Cities ordaining every where the first fruits of such as believed having made proof and trial of them by the Spirit to be Overfeers and Deacons to minister unto them that should afterwards believe So that it seems they were so far from neglecting to provide Governours for the future state of the Church that they were carefull beforehand to provide Governours for future Churches And this he affirms the Apostles did because they understood by our Lord Jesus Christ that strife and contention would arise about the Title of Episcopacy for this cause therefore having absolute knowledge beforehand thereof they ordained the forenamed Officers and for the future gave them moreover in command that whensoever they should dye others well approved of should succeed into their Office and Ministery So that it is evident that the Apostles themselves by virtue of our Saviour's order observed and prescribed a particular form of Government to be continued down to future Ages And though our Authour does not express the several distinct Orders by the common names of Bishop Priest and Deacon yet he describes them as expresly by allusion to the Jewish Hierarchy under the names of High-priest Priest and Levite
met with many Bishops and found them all of one Mind and teaching the same Doctrine and having given some account of Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians he adds that the Church remain'd after that in the pure and right Doctrine untill the time of Primus Bishop there with whom sayling to Rome I conferred and abode many days being come to Rome I stayed there till the time of Anicetus whose Deacon was Eleutherius whom Soter succeeded and after him Eleutherius In all their Succession and in every one of their Cities it is no otherways taught than as the Law and the Prophets and the Lord himself preached This is a singular Testimony of the sincere Tradition not onely of one or two or a few Churches but of the Catholick Church And as he described the Ecclesiastical Succession every where so has he the rise and birth of Heresies and particularly in the Church of Jerusalem After that James sirnamed the Just had suffer'd Martyrdom his Uncle Simeon the Son of Cleophas was chosen Bishop being preferred by the unanimous Vote of all because he was the Lord's Kinsman And hitherto that Church was call'd a pure Virgin because as yet it had not been deflour'd with any false Doctrines But Thebalis being displeased that he was not chosen Bishop secretly endeavour'd to debauch it from whom sprang those many Heresies that he afterward reckons up and so having elsewhere described the Martyrdom of Saint Simeon he adds untill those times the Church of God remain'd a pure and undefiled Virgin For such as endeavour'd to corrupt the perfect Rule and the sincere delivery of the Faith hid themselves till that time in secret and obscure places but after that the sacred Company of the Apostles was worn out and that generation was wholly spent that by special favour had heard with their Ears the heavenly Wisedom of the Son of God then the conspiracy of wicked and detestable Heresies through the fraud and imposture of such as affected to be masters of new and strange Doctrines took rooting And because none of the Apostles were then surviving they published with all imaginable confidence and boldness their false conceits and impugned the old plain certain and known truth At these passages I must stop a little because though they are a great Testimony of the purity of the primitive Church yet I find them very confidently made use of by Innovatours as unanswerable Arguments for rejecting its Authority Thus Gittichius an eager Socinian contending with Ruarus both concerning Grotius his way of writing in making so much use of citations out of the ancient Fathers in his Commentaries and withall concerning the primitive Fasts of the Church which Schliclingius and some of that party began to imitate condemns it not onely as altogether useless but dangerous De antiquitate in Religionis negotio statuo extra ipsas sacras novi foederis literas in iis exempla Apostolorum nullius omnino antiquitatis habendam cuiquam Christiano ullam rationem And then proves his Assertion from this passage of Hegesippus and the more ancient he says the Tradition is after the time of the Apostles so much the worse it is because from the very time of their dissolution the Church was overrun with Heresie and Superstition So peevish are Men against the honour and authority of the ancient Church when they are sensible of their own Apostasie from it And the truth is all our Innovatours agree in this one principle and that for this one very good reason because the ancient Church if it were permitted to give judgment upon them condemns them all For these Men finding errours and corruptions in the Church of Rome instead of reforming them as they ought to have done according to the Constitution of the primitive Church they fall to contriving new Models and Bodies of Divinity out of their own brains And among others Socinus disliking the Calvinian Theology as contrary not onely to the holy Scriptures but to the first principles of natural Religion sets up a new Divinity of his own contrivance without ever enquiring into the Doctrine and Discipline of the ancient Church and being advised of his flying so wide of it he together with his followers rather than part with their own fine new Notions of which they had the honour to be the first Authours and Abettours will by no means allow of any such thing as a true and uncorrupted Church ever since the time of the Apostles But with what vanity and arrogance it is none of my present task to enquire onely in answer to this Objection I must reply that it is a very wide and I am sure very far from a civil Inference to conclude that because there were Heresies in the primitive Church there was nothing else And they might with as much reason have applied the Objection against the Apostolical Church it self because then as the Apostles themselves complain the Tares were sowing though it seems not so openly and so impudently as afterwards Nay upon these terms it is impossible their should ever be any such thing as a true Church in the World for as long as there are such things as Pride and Vanity among Mankind there will be such Men in all Societies as will be tainted with their own idle dreams and conceits and then rub their itch upon the common People But though there were Heresies in the primitive Church which I say was not to be avoided as long as it consisted of Men yet they were never able to prevail but after some struggling for admittance were sooner or later utterly stifled And we have as certain a Tradition of the Birth Growth and Death of Heresies as we have of the true Doctrines of the Church and it is very considerable that all the ancient Doctours of the Church overwhelm the Hereticks with this one Argument by convicting them of apparent Innovation and deriving down their own Doctrines from the Apostles themselves So that though there were Heresies in the primitive Church yet its Apostolical Tradition was never mixt or tainted with them but run down in a pure and clear chanel by it self And therefore it is a very childish as well as disingenuous Objection against its Authority that there were some Men in it that would have been corrupting the purity of its Doctrine but were never able to compass their design especially when they were so far from passing undiscover'd or uncontroul'd that we have as certain an account both of the Men and of their Opinions and their inconsistency with the Apostolical Tradition as we have of the new fangled conceits of our own present Innovatours And therefore there is no more danger of our swallowing down old Heresies together with the Tradition of the Church than there is of sucking in their new ones whilst we adhere faithfully to that And thus having upon occasion of this particular passage of this ancient Authour cleared the Authority of the ancient Church in
and it requires onely eye-sight to observe that it could be contrived no other way but by Divine Providence But when I pretend to have routed all the mechanick Philosophers it is so far from presumption that there is no more glory in it than in the Conquest of an Infant And indeed nothing does more exactly resemble their wise contrivances than the little sports and works of Children for just as they make their Play-things so do these grave Philosophers make their Worlds In short the folly and non-sense of meer Mechanism or accounting for the nature of Things onely by Matter or Motion or any other second Causes is so notorious that all the Philosophers in the World never were nor ever will be able to give any the least account how so much as a Stone should fall to the ground without a Divine Providence This may seem a very odd challenge to be made to the great Wits and Virtuosi of Mankind but I make it not rashly and have throughly consider'd all their Attempts and more than enough demonstrated their Vanity and am sure upon the most diligent enquiry that it can never be done any other way than by resolving it into the force of Magnetism than which in all the Universe there is not a more amasing piece of Divine Art and Wisedom But here before I can proceed to what ought to have immediately followed I am forced to thrust in a kind of preposterous digression in answer to a very mean piece of disingenuity that I have lately met with from the Mechanick Philosophers viz. That I have made too bold with the reputation of great and famous Men and treat those that have been admired and renown'd for Wisedom and Learning in all Ages as if they were void of common sense And thus the late Authour of the Augmentation to Mr. Hobbs his Life when he has represented me as one of the keenest and unkindest of his Adversaries brings off his Master with this clean Complement that he has no reason to take it unkindly from one that sticks not to treat the greatest even of the ancient Philosophers after the same rate and gives the same correction even to the great Aristotle himself as to Mr. Hobbs and as for the famour de-Cartes he sticks not to chastise him like any School-boy But in the first place methinks this is a very poor and humble Objection and becomes not the due confidence of a Philosopher For it is this sort of Men that first upbraid us with the great and unanswerable Performances of Mr. Hobbs and tell us that till we can answer him we may preach what we please to the People but wise Men will be of his mind And yet when we not onely answer but plainly demonstrate the pitifull and even childish folly of his pretended Philosophy that is objected as an unpardonable rudeness to so learned a Man But I would fain know what is to be done in this case you will not be content till we undertake him and yet if we do you grow angry and our very attempting it is made our crime But yet if he be exposed 't is none of our fault but his own for 't is not in any Man's power to make his Notions better or worse than they are and if we represent them truly and they prove ridiculous we cannot help it but if we do not it would be somewhat to the purpose if they could convince us of so unmanly a piece of disingenuity but till then 't is at best but a very childish thing to complain either of unkind or uncivil Usage And therefore in the second place it was done much less like a Philosopher onely to give an account of my Assertions against Mr. Hobbs without taking any notice of our Reasons and Arguments For if I have charged any thing upon Mr. Hobbs and have not demonstratively prov'd it I am bound to give publick satisfaction to his memory But if I have then the severity of my charge is no fault of mine and for that I dare and do appeal to the judgment of all impartial Men whether I have not proved upon and against him all that I pretended to and if I have then it is evident that Mr. Hobbs has asserted a very wicked Cause very foolishly But lastly 't is done still much less like a Philosopher to load me with that invidious charge of traducing the greatest Worthies among the Ancients For I know no one quality more unbecoming a Man that pretends to letters and civility than an envious affectation of finding fault with the Performances of great Men. This has ever been the creeping artifice of small People to make themselves considerable onely by the greatness of their Adversaries and it is a practice that I detest as I do Slander or Perjury And if they could but assign one Instance in which I have in the least wrong'd any learned Man they should not be so forward to shew it as I would be to confess it But otheways to insinuate that I spare not the greatest even of the ancient Heroes is to say no worse but a sneaking way of encountring an Enemy and indeed an inward confession of the want of some better reply For if they thought they were able to overthrow Arguments in fair Combate they would scorn to betake themselves to such skulking Artifices For when all is done the whole merits of the Cause will rest upon the reason of the thing so that if I have opposed or confuted any of the ancient Philosophers upon good and substantial grounds I have done them no wrong in doing Truth right If otherwise I have not really injured them but my self and it is in these Gentlemens power that make the complaint to demonstrate the falshood or the folly of my Opposition But till then I think it becomes not the state and grandeur of a Philosopher to condescend to such poor topicks of Insinuation But if they will do so it is all one to me for my onely design is the pursuit of real Truth I mean not useless and barren Speculation but such as is serviceable to the Happiness of humane Nature and that is all the Learning or Wisedom that I care for And if any Man stand in my way though it be Aristotle or de-Cartes Epicurus or Mr. Hobbs Friend or Foe yea though it be M. Tullius himself yes though it be an Angel from Heaven I must on and if I am forced to justle them out of my way I cannot help it for I am resolved never to leave it my self However it is a vain thing for Mechanick Philosophers to complain of being a little derided when they so wantonly and affectedly expose themselves to it For how is it possible for the wittiest Men to come off with better success that when we see the whole World framed with such admirable Art and Wisedom shall undertake to teach the senseless Materials of which it is made to be their own Architect I will
if one be true all is true if one false all is false So that if there be a Deity there must be a Law of Nature and if a Law of Nature a future State And on the contrary if no future State then no Law of Nature and if no Law of Nature no Deity So that the proof of all the rest ultimately resolves into the proof of a Deity and that being the most evident thing in Nature it gives the same evidence to all other Principles that are so inseparably connected with it And having brought our Argument to that head there we may safely leave it and challenge the assent of Mankind to both the other till they can rationally quit themselves of the belief of that And 't is for this reason chiefly that I have waved all physical Arguments for the Soul's Immortality because how valid soever they may be they cannot be so certain nor indeed any thing else as the existence of a Deity which is the most certain thing in Nature and of which I have as good assurance as of my own Being Beside I am quite tired out with the dulness of Mechanical Philosophy with which I must have engaged if I had undertaken the Physical Argument but alas when they are not able to give any tolerable account of a Stone 's falling to the Earth by meer Mechanism what wretched work are they like to make of it when they would make out all the Actions of humane Understanding by the fortuitous workings of Matter And when Mr. Hobbs tells us that Reflection upon our own Thoughts is nothing but the Reaction of one parcel of Matter upon another the Notion is just as wise and philosophical as if the witty old Gentleman had told us That when one bowling Stone beats back another the repercussion is Understanding I know some attempts of the same kind have been made by wiser Men but as long as they terminate in meer Matter and make the Brain any more than the Instrument of Conveyance between the operations of the Mind and the Body their discourse is full as wise as if they would undertake to turn Custards and Mince-pies into Philosophers or Statesmen And therefore I cared not to meddle with this part of the Argument because I must confess I was ashamed to be caught at Childs play However if there be any Mechanism as no doubt there is it is Divine Mechanism but as for that I will not be so presumptuous as to pretend to fathom it and though it were easie enough from philosophick Reasons Observations and Experiments to demonstrate that God has actually made humane Nature something more Noble yet because there is nothing in all natural Philosophy so evident as the Being of the Divine Providence and because the future state of Mankind is so apparently connected with it that alone far exceeds the evidence of all other demonstration And I have so much the rather pursued this Argument because though I find it suggested by several Authours both ancient and modern yet it is not that I know of prosecuted by any If I would have been more copious than was absolutely necessary after I had shewn that there was no account to be given of the Providence of God in the Government of Mankind without the supposition of a future State I might have run through the whole Series of humane Affairs and shewn not onely how just but how wise the Providence of God is in the management of all things upon this Supposition But alas when it is once proved that Divine Providence cannot be justified without it it will immediately and of it self clearly prove how excellently it is quitted by it All Objections from the real Vanity of this World and the seeming inequality of Justice towards good and bad Men are clear'd up by the certainty of a future reserve But the proof of this being so easie and obvious after the proof of the other it is needless to treat of it apart because it does not so much follow upon it as go along with it and at the same time we perceive that Providence cannot be justified without it we cannot but see how admirably it is justified with it Thus far may we advance by following the nature of Things and the conduct of natural Reason and it is a sufficient declaration of the will of God to Mankind supposing that he has endued them with a faculty of Understanding and that they are pleased to make use of it for if he has the connexion of these things is evident enough to any Man that will observe it but if he will not he is not capable of any kind of Information no blindness more incurable than when Men will not see But as bright as the light of Nature shines it is but a dimm thing if compared to that great glory that is reveal'd in the Gospel there Life and Immortality are brought to Light so as to be made evident not onely to our Reasons but our very Senses our belief of it is founded upon visible experiment and ocular demonstration And that is the Argument of the Second Part to demonstrate that the original proof of it is on all sides so evidently confirm'd and so advantageously guarded against all Objections that it is not possible for the wit of Mankind to have laid the same design so as to have made it more unquestionable For that is an undoubted proof of its being a contrivance of the Divine Providence in that if we would onely suppose that the Providence of God should set such a design on foot we cannot comprehend how it was possible to recommend its truth to the World with greater Advantage And as it was at first attended with all imaginable Evidence so is the Testimony whereby the knowledge of it is conveyed down to us so undoubted and uninterrupted that if we our selves had been Eye-witnesses of it we could scarce have had a greater assurance of its truth and reality in brief there are so many and so forcible Arguments to prove it apparently true that I cannot think it too much confidence to affirm that it is scarce possible to be false And therefore for the more effectual demonstration of it I have gone that way to work to make out its proof from the monstrous and infinite absurdities of Unbelief and shewn that it must believe every thing that is incredible all the contradictions to humane Nature and humane Affairs I have laid the whole stress of my Argument upon the Evidence of the matter of Fact and for its greater advantage I have leapt over fourteen Centuries and taken a prospect of things in the same posture in which they stood the three first Ages of the Church For then the History of our Saviour's Reformation was as certain and undoubted to the Men of that Age as the change of Religion under Henry the Eighth is or can be to the Men of this And here I have so closely traced the Tradition of it
Wisedom and Goodness to lay any thing as the Foundation of Faith but upon the firmest and most evident Principles when it is a matter of so vast and infinite concernment to Mankind so that when the Object of our Faith is a matter of the greatest moment it is but just and reasonable that the evidence of its Truth should be proportionable to the weight and value of its Importance In short If they mean that this particular History has as great evidence as it is capable of then all that they say amounts to no more than this that it has as much proof as it has If they mean that this historical Truth has as much certainty as any historical Truth whatsoever is capable of then why should they call this kind of certainty moral rather than any other Historical certainty it is but historical certainty is as certain in its kind as physical or mathematical are in their kinds And I have as great assurance that the Fanatique Rebels murther'd King Charles the First as I have of any Proposition in Euclid and a much greater than I have of any thing in natural Philosophy except the Being and Providence of a Deity which indeed equals it And the same evidence do the Grounds and Motives of our Christian Faith carry along with them in that the History of it asserts it self with so great and so many demonstrative circumstances as makes it impossible to be false § II. For though their direct evidence be made up of many less evident Particulars yet the accumulation of all together amounts to the full evidence of demonstrative Certainty It being impossible that so vast a multitude of fair and plausible things should conspire to vouch and authorise a meer Imposture And that a palpable Lie should by chance have as much evidence of proof as can be demanded for the most unquestionable Truth of the same Nature Or what can be more absolutely incredible than that a meer Fable should be set off with all the Advantages of Argument that the truest and best vouch't History in the World can pretend to And yet I say so many and so reasonable are the inducements of our Faith that though it be possible to hold out against their single force yet in their united strength they grow into an evidence so great that it is little less than irresistible They come so strong and so thick upon our Minds that they force their own way so that it is scarce left in the power of an honest Mind to resist such armies and legions of Reason though I know a stubborn Man may struggle with the strongest conviction and if he be resolved to be humoursome in his Infidelity it is not in the power of all the reason and all the demonstration in the World to force a wilfull Understanding And yet at prefent I shall wave all that variety of Argument that by direct force asserts and proves the Divine Authority of the Gospel and rather choose to proceed in an inverse method by turning the Infidels Weapons and Sceptical Objections upon themselves So that whereas they are wont to attempt the Foundations of our Faith with a few weak and little Cavils I will load their Infidelity with such an intolerable heap of Absurdities as shall for ever dash their Confidence and disarm their Impiety And if I can demonstrate the horrible Absurdity of Unbelief that will be an irresistible demonstration of the Reasonableness of Belief And I chose this way of procedure rather than the other because though perhaps it is not more evident in it self yet is it more affecting to the generality of the Minds of Men For I find most Men so ill-natur'd as to be much more apt and forward to discern a Falshood than to acknowledge a Truth so that it is much more easie to convince them by the Absurdities of that than by the rational Proofs of this Though the chief reason why I pitch upon this method is because it is most proper and sutable to the temper of this present Age In that there are a sort of Men too common among us who because they can say four or five witty things against the Christian Religion will by all means be setting up for Infidels in spite of all that innumerable multitude of soher and reasonable Arguments that if they do not utterly prevent yet infinitely out balance all their little Talkings And if they can but pick up two or three unhappy Remarques upon the holy Scriptures out of that foolish Book the Leviathan they think themselves made for ever and how happy are they in the luckiness of the discovery It mends their humours and raises their parts and they that t'other day were but ordinary Mortals as to the endowments of Nature and sufficient Dunces as to the emprovements of Learning immediately become great Philosophers and deep Clerks The forward Youth sets up in his Country for the Man of Logick and Disputation makes the simple and ignorant People stand amased at the Wit and Profoundness of our young Master's Discourse and the poor Village Curate is sure to be the Trophee of his Confidence and if at any time he chance to encounter a Man of Learning with what briskness does he attaque his Gravity a Gnat is not more troublesome with its little sting and buzz than he with his small Sophistry And though the Truant be no better furnished than the Jews supposed the Carpenter's Son to have been you shall find him upon all occasions disputing with the Doctours and Rabbies of the Temple And he shall disperse all that heap and accumulation of Arguments that the most learned of them is able to produce in defence of the Christian Faith with any pitifull Repartee that beside that it is void of all Reason has scarce Wit enough to tempt any Man to laugh beside himself Now it is in vain to convince such Men by downright dint of Argument and therefore seeing they have not Wit or Learning enough to be reason'd into Truth and Sobriety I shall take another course with them by shaming them into it Let us then turn the Tables and consider a little how many strange and incredible things those Men are forced to believe that are resolved to disbelieve the Gospel And here immediately appear such vast numbers of horrid and ghastly Incongruities as are enough to scare any ingenuous Man into the belief of any thing in the World rather than be troubled with such a monstrous and unreasonable Infidelity They must force their understandings to believe numberless contradictions to the common reason and experience of all Mankind and they swallow not single absurdities but every Article of their unbelief is pregnant with swarms of extravagant and incredible conceits § III. And for the proof hereof I fhall represent no more than the incredibility of one viz. that our Saviour is not risen from the Dead And herein I follow his own wise and admirable Advice to begin the demonstration of
the World both of the Sufficiency and Sincerity of the Witnesses Of their Sufficiency in that they were Eye-witnesses of his Miracles and Companions of his Conversation and were themselves sufficiently suspicious and incredulous and refused to be convinced till their distrustfull Minds were overborn by evidence of Fact Of their Sincerity not onely from the agreement of so great a number of honest and upright Men in the same Report but from their readiness to seal the truth of their Testimony with their Bloud And what greater Assurances was it possible for them to have of the truth of their Testimony than to be Eye-witnesses of what they reported And what greater Evidence is it possible for us to desire of the certainty of their Report than they have given us of their Fidelity So that here to withhold or deny our Assent is first a direct affront to the Faith and Reason of Mankind 't is to give the Lye to all the World and suppose none worthy of any Belief beside our selves For unless we will distrust the truth of all manner of Testimony and believe nothing but by the immediate information of our own Senses there is no remedy but we must of necessity quit all degrees of diffidence and suspicion in this Affair Secondly We must believe that Men endued with the first Principle of humane Nature love of Life should conspire to throw away their Lives onely to gain credit to an impudent Lye Thirdly We must either believe that Men endued with the Principles of common Sense would lose their Lives for a ridiculous Fable or that a company of Fools and Madmen could so easily perswade the World to believe such a wild Story meerly by virtue of their Report Lastly We must believe that Men who made it their onely employment to advance Truth and Vertue in the World should yet dye Martyrs to Falsehood and Villany and that when they layed down their Lives for the sake of Jesus they were not in good earnest Now laying all these things together and onely supposing that there was at that time such a Person as Jesus of Nazareth in the World I will appeal to the common Sense of Mankind whether 't is possible for any History or Report to come attested with more various more pregnant more unquestionable motives of Credibility than his Actions particularly his Resurrection as publisht to the World by his Apostles And thus having considered the evidence of their Testimony as given in by word of Mouth I come in the next place to consider their Testimony as recorded in their Writings and to shew into what wild Absurdities we must again run our selves if we will not believe the truth of the Scripture-history § VII First then We must believe either that the Gospels were written by those Persons whose Names they bear or that they were not If they were then we must believe that the things that they relate of their own knowledge were either true or false If true then we believe the truth of the Christian Faith If false then either for want of sufficient knowledge or sincerity Not for want of knowledge for two of the Evangelists Saint Matthew and Saint John were immediate Disciples and constant Companions of the Person whose History they wrote and so were present at his Works and Miracles and Eye-witnesses of his Resurrection Saint Mark and Saint Luke if they were not Disciples during our Saviour's abode upon the Earth they were intimate Associates with the chief Apostles that were So that if they wrote not from their own immediate knowledge yet however they wrote from the information of Eye-witnesses And as for the Acts of the Apostles written by Saint Luke Saint Luke himself was interested in the greatest part of if not all the History And so for the Epistles pretended to be written by the Apostles either they were or they were not if they were then their case is the same with that of the Gospel's that they had sufficient knowledge of the things they wrote of So plain is it that if those Persons wrote the Books of the New Testament who go for their Authours that we have no ground to suspect the truth and certainty of their Reports for want of sufficient knowledge and information And then as for their sincerity the case of their writing is the same with that of their preaching and so labours under all the foremention'd Difficulties and one more peculiar to it self viz. that when they had been so wicked as to contrive a wilfull Lye and so foolish as to publish it to all the World they should meet with no contradiction in so gross and manifest a Forgery These things were written in a very short time after they were done and therefore if they were false it is not possible that they should escape discovery or obtain any the least belief For example When Saint Luke reports that a Person born lame and known to all the Inhabitants of Jerusalem by his having beg'd daily for many years at the chief Gate of the Temple was cured by Saint Peter onely with invocating the Name of Jesus and that this Miracle was so very well known at Jerusalem that it immediately converted no less than five thousand Persons to the Christian Faith If all this had been a Fable the meer publication of it had provoked thousands of People nay the whole Nation of the Jews and especially the Citizens of Jerusalem to discover the falsehood and it could not but have met with so much Opposition as utterly and for ever to disgrace and destroy it self And so again When Saint Paul tells the Corinthians that our Saviour after his Resurrection was seen not onely by the Apostles and himself but by above five hundred Persons at once most of whom were then surviving If this had been a Lye it had been a very foolish and impudent one and too bold for any Man to vent that was not lost not onely to all modesty but all discretion and if any Man could have been so rash as to venture upon so lewd a falsehood it is impossible that he could ever have escaped the shame of discovery Especially when it was written to baffle some Fanatick Persons who denied that there was any such thing as a Resurrection for as all others would be eager to enquire into the truth of it for the satisfaction of their Curiosity so would those Men especially be concern'd to examine it more strictly if it were possible to confute their Adversary So that it is equally incredible that Saint Paul should be so weak as to vent so great a Lye that might be so easily contradicted and that when he had vented it he should be so lucky as to escape all manner of Contradiction from those who were concern'd to oppose him For if he had been convicted of falsehood in it all the Corinthians must immediately have turn'd back to their Infidelity and therefore when we find the Christian Faith prevailing every where
upon such appeals and challenges as these that is an evident Demonstration of their undoubted truth and reality And this may suffice for the proof of the truth of Scripture-history supposing the Books of it were written by those Persons whose Names they bear Though beside this it is no inconsiderable proof of their Integrity that Eusebius has observed in their impartial way of writing Thus onely Saint Matthew himself of all the Evangelists takes notice of his own dishonourable Employment before his Conversion and Saint Mark who wrote his Gospel from the information of Saint Peter is observably sparing in those things that might tend to the praise of that Apostle and so could not with decent modesty be reported by himself but more exact than any other of the Evangelists in the description of his shamefull Fall Thus when Saint Peter had so frankly own'd our Saviour for the Messias Saint Matthew relates our Saviour's Answer with a high Commendation of him Blessed art thou Simon Bar Jona for Flesh and Bloud hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in Heaven And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it And I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven Then charged he his Disciples that they should tell no Man that he was Jesus the Christ. Whereas in Saint Mark all these magnificent Expressions of our Saviour to Saint Peter are modestly omitted and all the Answer that is there made is no more than this And he charged them that they should tell no Man And so again though Saint Mark in all his other Relations is more compendious than any of the other Evangelists yet in the Story of Saint Peter's denial of his Saviour he is most of all circumstantial And whereas Saint Matthew and Saint Luke set off the greatness of his Repentance afterwards by saying that he wept bitterly Saint Mark expresses it more modestly onely that he wept Now when Writers pass by such things as make for their own praise and record their own Faults and Miscarriages that without their own discovery might never have been known to Posterity they are of all Men least to be suspected of falsehood and give the strongest proof in the World of their love to Truth and Sincerity So again granting that they would not stick at any falsehood to advance their Master's Honour and Reputation yet to what purpose should they forge Lyes of his Disgraces and Sufferings especially all those shamefull Circumstances that they have recorded of his Condemnation and Execution Now if we believe them in the black and tragical part of the Story why not in all For if they onely design'd to set off their Master's Greatness why do they so carefully acquaint the World with the History of his Misfortunes Why do they tell us of his great Agony before his Passion of his scourgings and Mockings of his purple Robe and reeden Scepter of the Contumelies and Reproaches that were thrown at him whilst he was hanging on the Gibbet of his being forsaken by all his Followers of his being abjured by the most zealous of them all and that without the application of Racks or Torments These things if not true to what purpose should they invent them nay if true why should they not doe what they were able to stiflle them if the onely design of their Romance had been to gain Honour to their Master So that if they were honest and faithfull in those sad Relations concerning him why not in those that carry Triumph and Reputation in them For if they had design'd to lye for his Glory they must have baulk't every thing that might any way offend the Reader And if they had design'd a Romance instead of that plain Story that they have recorded to Posterity they would have told us that Judas had no sooner given the treacherous Kiss but he was turn'd into a Stone that the Hand that struck him was immediately wither'd that Caiphas and his Accusers were struck blind that the Souldiers who supposed they had apprehended him had onely seised a Phantasm whilst he vanisht away that his Judges were befoold in all their phantastick Process against him whilst he stood invisible among them despising their Mock-solemnity In short was it in all humane Accounts much more becoming the grandeur and dignity of that Person that he pretended to be that he should not have been obnoxious to the common Miseries and Calamities of humane Life but that when by his Divine Power he had establisht his Kingdom in the World he should have return'd back to Heaven without any suffering and with all the Ornaments of Glory and Triumph This certainly had been much more proper matter for a Romance if they had design'd nothing but their Master's Greatness than to have fain'd those mixt Actions that are recorded of him in the Gospels and those that would have believed their other Reports would not have disbelieved these And therefore seeing they would not corrupt or suppress the Truth in the unpleasant part of the Story we have no ground to suspect them of the least falsehood in any other part of it howsoever in it self strange and miraculous when it is so evident that their design was real Truth and not their Master's Greatness § VIII But if we believe the Books of Scripture were not written by those Authours whose Names they bear then we must believe that either they were forged in their days or afterwards If in their days then they either own'd them as true or not If they vouched them they gave them the same Authority as if they had been indited by themselves If they disown'd them as containing Reports that they knew to be false then they themselves were obliged to discover the Imposture which having never done that is an undeniable evidence that if they were written in their time either they themselves writ them or at least approved of them But if they were written afterwards how came they to meet with such an early and universal reception in the Christian Churches We find them always own'd as the undoubted records of the Evangelists and Apostles in the most ancient Writers that lived after them nay some with them Now how is it possible that Books that contain in them matters so strange and wonderfull if they had been counterfeit and spurious and thrust upon the World after the death of those Persons whose names they pretend to bear should command such a catholick and unquestionable reputation If indeed they had pretended to have lain obscure for some time and to have been afterwards retrieved there might have been some ground of suspicion But when they are own'd as the most ancient and undoubted records of the Church
when they are quoted as such by those Persons that lived next and immediately after them and have passed from the very first Age through all Ages downward with an unquestionable Authority there is no possible account to be given how they should first come by it and then for ever after retain it unless they were for certain the Works of those Men whose names they bear Thus particularly Saint Matthew's Gospel is quoted by Clemens of Rome a Familiar of Saint Paul by Ignatius by Policarp by Papias the Disciples of Saint John not to mention Justin Martyr Athenagoras Irenaeus and all the other Writers of the Age next after the Apostles Now if this be so Then first Either this Gospel was written in the Apostles time or it was not If not how could it be cited by those that were their Contemporaries Secondly The things reported in it were either true or false if true then so is the Gospel too if false then it had destroyed its own credit by publishing known falshoods For though it is easie to forge a Story acted in former times without discovery and contradiction yet to make a Forgery of so wonderfull a transaction as was the History of Jesus of Nazareth so near the time in which it was pretended to have been acted and that without controll or contradiction nay with full credit and undoubted Authority as appears by these Apostolical Mens unanimous Testimony is if any thing in the World absurd and incredible enough to make up another Article of Infidelity Thirdly Either this Book was written by Saint Matthew or it was not If it was then it was the Testimony of an eye Witness that converst with our Saviour both before and after his Resurrection If it was not then how could it be thrust upon him in his own Age and gain so unquestionable an Authority with those Men that conversed either with him or with his Companions And now if we gain the Authority of this one Gospel that alone is a sufficient proof of the Divine Authority of the Christian Faith in that the main Foundations of it are here recorded viz. The Life Death and Resurrection of our Saviour which being believed as they are here recorded are an infallible demonstration of his Divinity The same account I might give of almost all the other Books of the New Testament in that they were received from the beginning as the most unquestionable Records of the Apostles But that were onely to repeat the same Argument so many times over and therefore supposing the same ancient Testimony concerning them as we have concerning Saint Matthew I shall leave the Reader to apply the same Argument that I have urged concerning him Neither do I this onely to avoid needless Repetition but because it has been often done by other hands particularly by Eusebius of old and Huetius of late who have vouched every Book by it self from the Testimony of the earliest Antiquity And therefore as for the truth of the matter of Fact I had rather refer to them than transcribe them though that being supposed the Argument is of the same force in every one as it is in Saint Matthew's Gospel § IX It is true that some few Books were for a good time doubted of as the Epistle to the Hebrews the Second of Saint Peter the Second and Third of Saint John and the Apocalypse But then first Suppose their Authority was still questionable the Christian Faith can subsist very well without them by the remaining Authority of those that were never questioned And though they are very usefull and excellent Discourses yet have they little peculiar in them that is not to be found in the other Apostolical Writings And if we understand the matter aright though they are written by Divine Inspiration yet are they not of the Foundation of the Christian Faith but onely pious Discourses proceeding upon the supposition of it Being written occasionally either to exhort us to an effectual belief of those things that are recorded in the Gospels or to encourage us against Tryals and Persecutions or to allay Schisms and Contentions or to confute Errours and Heresies or to reform Abuses and Corruptions so that though they had never been written the Foundations of our Faith were before firmly laid in the History of our Saviour's Life Doctrine Passion and Resurrection And therefore the Authority of all the rest is at last resolved into that of the historical Books that is the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles which being supposed true they warrant both the Reason and Authority of the Apostolical Epistles that onely deduce those proper and natural Conclusions that flow from their Premises Nay farther 't is not primarily necessary to Christianity to believe that the Books of the New Testament were dictated by an infallible Spirit but it is sufficient that the historical Books are good and authentick Records of the Life of our Saviour and the design of his Errand into the World and that the Writings of the Apostles are pious Discourses consonant with and conducing to the Ends of Christianity The Foundation whereof seems to lie in this one thing that Jesus Christ was sent into the World for the Work he pretended to come about by Divine Commission For God having set several Hypotheses of Providence on work in the World to bring all things to their end and perfection at last design'd this as the most compleat model of all Vertue Goodness and Morality So that if the History of those things which Jesus both did and taught be truly recorded by the Evangelists that is a sufficient evidence of his own Divine Authority But as for his Historians that comes in upon another score in that we know that the Authours of all those Writings were inspired and directed by the Holy Ghost but then that we know onely from the Writings themselves and therefore their Truth must be supposed antecedent to their Divine Authority and that being supposed our Saviour's Divine Authority is thereby proved and that being proved that alone is a full demonstration of the Divinity of the Christian Religion But secondly If those few Books were so long debated before they were admitted into the Canon that is an Argument of the great care and caution of the Church in its belief in that it would not lightly receive any Book till it was fully satisfied of its being Authentick and therefore its long doubtfulness and disputation about these Books clears it from all suspicion of rashness and credulity as to those that she always own'd with a full and unanimous Approbation Thirdly The Controversie concerning the disputed Books relates not so much to their Antiquity as their Authour and they are not brought in question because they were not written in the Apostolical Age but because it seemed uncertain by whom they were then written Thus the Epistle to the Hebrews some attribute to Saint Paul some to Saint Luke some to Barnabas some to Clemens but if it
so often recited and are so vulgarly known that it were labour in vain to give my self or the Reader the trouble of their Repetition Especially when they prove no more than what no Man can doubt of viz. That there was at that time such a Man as Jesus of Nazareth and that in a short time he drew great numbers of Disciples after him The first is certainly past question and the second is as evident meerly from the History of Nero's Reign under whom what vast multitudes of Christians suffer'd both Civil and Ecclesiastical Historians unanimously agree And therefore I shall pass over these more general Records and onely suggest two or three particular Narrations that relate not onely to the existence of our Saviour's Person but to the veracity of his Pretences § XIV The first is that known History of Phlegon Gentleman to the Emperour Adrian in his general History of the Olympiads concerning both the Eclipse of the Sun and the Earthquake at our Saviour's Passion And it is a Testimony so exactly agreeing with the Evangelical History both as to the year and the very hour of the day and the most material circumstances of the thing that had it not been for the vanity of Criticks it could never have met with dispute or opposition But those Men will not stick to move the Earth from its Centre rather than loose the honour of being the Father of one Criticism otherwise certainly this passage so considently appeal'd to by the Writers of the Christian Church as agreeing with the publick Records of the Empire together with that of Thallus another Heathen cited by that accurate Chronologer Africanus could not but have escaped their censuring severity And yet it must come under their lash because say they Phlegon speaks of it as a natural Eclipse But this they say out of their own heads for he onely records the matter of Fact but whether it were natural or praeternatural concerns not him either as a Courtier or an Historian And though it is demonstrable that if it hapned at that time that he says it did it was praeternatural and though himself expresly affirms that it was such an Eclipse that never the like hapned yet waving all this it is enough that he affirms that such an Eclipse hapned at the same time even to the very hour of the day and so it is rationally urged by Tertullian Eodem momento dies medium Orbem signante Sole subducta est deliquium putaverunt qui id quoque super Christum prozedicatum non scierunt tamen eum Mundi casum relatum in Archivis vestris habetis At the very moment of our Saviour's Crucifixion the Sun was darkned at mid-day and though they supposed it onely an Eclipse that knew nothing of its relation to the Passion of Christ yet this strange accident be it what it will you may find registred in your publick Records And if that be true it is all that can be desired in this case from an heathen Historian to vouch the truth of the Story And yet this is more for if it be true it is from thence evident that this Eclipse was miraculous and praeternatural in that it hapned at the full of the Moon § XV. The next heathen Testimony is of an higher nature and relates more immediately to the Divinity of our Saviour and that is the Opinion of Tiberius concerning him upon that Account and Narrative that he had received of his Life Death and Resurrection out of Palestine and that from Pilate himself Thus Tertullian tells the Governours of Rome in his Apology that Tiberius in whose time the Christian Religion came into the World having received an account out of Palestine in Syria concerning the truth of that Divinity that was there revealed brought it to the Senate with the Prerogative of his own Vote but that it was rejected by the Senate either because themselves had not in the first place according to form of Law approved of it or rather out of flattery to the Emperour because himself had refused that honour when offer'd to him by the Senate for the words quia non ipse probaverat are capable of either sense but though they denied this Title to our Saviour upon what account soever whether of State or of Courtship our Authour tells us expresly that the Emperour himself continued of the same mind Now though Tertullian be a Christian Writer yet he durst never have presumed to impose upon the Senate themselves with such a remarkable Story as this if he were not able to prove it and that he was is evident from Justin Martyr who often appeals to the Acts of Pilate concerning the History of our Saviour and requests the Emperours to satisfie themselves from their own Records concerning those things that were reported of him For it is a known Custom among the Romans for the Governours of Provinces to transmit an account of the most remarkable things that hapned under their Government to the Senate of old time and of later times to the Emperour And that Pilate had done so is evident from this Appeal of Justin Martyr for if there had been no such Acts scarce any Man much less such a Man as Justin Martyr could have been so foolish or so confident as to affirm a thing in which it was so very easie to convict him of falshood And if such Acts there were they are a great Evidence of the truth of our Saviour's Miracles when the Experour that was none of the best Men nor very apt to listen to such Stories was so surprised with the strangeness of them and that upon no less information than of Pilate himself and when Pilate upon a more full enquiry than it seems he was able or willing to make concerning the Works of Jesus at his Condemnation was so abundantly satisfied as to the truth of those strange things that were related of him as to think himself obliged to acquaint his Master with a Story so strange and wonderfull But here Isaac Casaubon endeavours to shrivle and criticise these Acts of Pilate into as little Authority as possibly he can and tells us that Justin Martyr does not call them the Acts of Pontius Pilate but the Acts under Pontius Pilate Though it is an undoubted thing that the Acts under Pilate reserved in the Imperial Archives were the Acts of Pilate that is they were compiled either by himself or by his command but transmitted by himself for the Emperours received no other Acts but from the Governours themselves and therefore the learned Man might have spared his Grammatical Criticism when it is certain from the thing it self that the publick Acts under the Government of Pontius Pilate must be transmitted by Pilate himself and so must be the Acts of Pilate Now that Pilate should give such an Account after our Saviour's Resurrection cannot seem strange if we consider his circumstances For setting aside the Relation of the Evangelists
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
under all those disadvantages that I have described if it had been nothing but mear falsehood and forgery And yet by reason of those very many and great disadvantages let its evidence have been never so bright it is possible for men either not at all to see or to wink at it So that at best this is but a Negative Testimony opposed to an Affirmative and in this particular case and under these circumstances though it were in it self not altogether useless of no force at all For unless Christianity were true it could never have been vouched as it is and though it were as certainly true as we pretend it was yet there was no necessity imposed upon all Mankind to yield to its belief Especially when it had all the disadvantages of present Interest to weigh against naked Truth and Interest alone as is too well known by experience has a more forcible influence upon most mens minds than Integrity So that here I might again run through all the foremention'd particulars and shew what force each of them singly much more all joyntly might have to hinder men from believing or owning the Christian Faith notwithstanding all that Evidence that it gave of its Divine Authority and particularly I might declaim upon the wonderful power of prejudice in this case and make a long common place of it to shew the equality of its strength to Truth it self But I shall make shorter work of it and consider only the matter of fact and the History of the thing and shew that whatever Opposition Christianity met with in the World was from unreasonable men and upon unreasonable grounds And if that be proved no man can think the Opinion of such men ought to weigh any thing by it self but much less against all that evidence of Reason and Record that we have laid together in the premises And this I shall now make good But for our clearer method of proceeding I shall divide my discourse into these particulars First to give an Account of the unreasonable Infidelity of the Jews and of this first as to the whole Nation secondly as to their several Factions first Saducees secondly Pharisees And then I shall proceed in the second place to the Heathens and shew how all unbelief in them proceeded meerly from the blindness either of Atheism or Superstition and this I shall demonstrate both as to the publick Persecutions and Private Oppositions that Christianity met with and thus when I have taken the Objection into pieces from the emptiness of each part it will appear that there is nothing in the whole And first the grand reason of the Infidelity of the Jews notwithstanding the demonstrative Evidence of the truth of Christianity was their invincible prejudice in honour of Moses so that they would not care to hear any thing that might derogate from him much less our Saviour that pretended to excell him And the truth is this prejudice had some reasonable force in it self that when Almighty God had in such a miraculous way deliver'd the Law by Moses and by virtue of that Law kept up his own true Worship in opposition to Idolatry that prevail'd every where but only in Judaea and when it was enacted with some expressions that seem to imply its perpetual and unalterable obligation and lastly when it had flourisht so many years and notwithstanding all that opposition that was made to it by the Heathen World it was so far from abating its force that it prevail'd upon its Enemies and brought over great numbers of Proselytes from Heathenism to the Jewish Church After all which at first sight it could not but appear very strange that an obscure Person a Galilaean a Carpenpenters Son should without any Appearances of Thunder and Lightning take upon him so confidently to repeal this Ancient this Divine this Venerable Law The very pretence could not but seem an unanswerable Objection to it self for what could his design be in throwing down the Law of Moses that was the only Bulwark against Idolatry than to let in all the Idolatry of the Heathen Nations upon them Besides if Moses acted by Divine Commission whatever was spoken to the disparagement of Moses reflected upon God himself so that this Person by pretending to enact a more perfect Law than that seem'd to make himself wiser than his Maker Such Objections as these were so natural and so obvious to the prejudiced People of the Jews as to keep them back from so much as making enquiry after such wild and Frantick Pretences And this as I have already intimated from Origen was the peculiar difficulty of our Saviour's work and as appears from the whole History of his Life was objected against all his Miracles as I have particularly shewn concerning the cure of the Man that was Born blind so that though they saw the truth of the Miracle yet they would not believe it because it was impossible that any man should come from God who could be so daringly Blasphemous as to prefer himself to Moses And this Objection our Saviour confesses so forcible as to acknowledge that nothing could answer it but his unparallel'd Miracles John 15. 24. If I had not done among them the works which never any man did they had not had sin but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father That is they had been excuseable in rejecting him and his pretences of Establishing a new Religion if his Miracles had not exceeded those of Moses and the Prophets whom yet they believed to have been sent from God but now when they have seen me do such works as none but God can do curing all manner of Diseases feeding thousands with a few Loaves raising the Dead and all only by the power of a Word as God at first Created the World after all this if they reject me it is plain that they affront him too And so again when he cured the man that was Blind and Dumb because they could not deny the Miracle they Blaspheme it and say it was done by the help of the most powerful of all the Devils for who else could assist the man that opposed Moses and therefore our Saviour having demonstrated by rational proof that he acted not by the power of Belzebub he tells them that it is evident from his Miraculous works that the Kingdom of God is come to them that is the Reign of the Messias as it is called Daniel 11. 14. And adds that all calumnies are pardonable but only that against the Holy Ghost that is the Power of God by which he discover'd his will to Mankind by which they barr'd their minds against all the means of Information and if they would not acknowledge that when they saw it in his Works it was not possible for him to make any impression upon them as men and so they thereby put themselves into a state of impenitence and an utter incapacity of Pardon Now it is plain that this obstinacy of
altogether false and frivolous what is that to what hapned at Rome So that had there been never so many of the Posterity of David at Babylon there might have been no more than two found at Rome And therefore if Hegesippus had affirm'd that there were onlytwo all Scaliger's Stories of Babylon are to no purpose But when he has affirm'd no such thing but on the contrary gives us a distinct account of Simeon the Son of Cleopas Bishop of Jerusalem who lived there after the time of Domitian Scaliger could have no motive to make the Objection but onely to empty his Common-place-book of two or three Rabinical Quotations But yet his next Exception is much worse viz. that there was no such Person as Judas of the Kindred of our Lord mention'd in the Gospels But suppose there were no such upon Record it seems very hard dealing with an Ancient Writer that lived so near the times that he Writes of and had opportunity of enquiring into the Genealogy of the Family when he affirms that there was such a Branch of it to deny the truth of the matter of Fact onely because it hapned not to be mention'd in the Gospels whereas nothing is better known than that divers more material passages relating to our Saviour's Family are there omitted their design being to describe his own descent from David and not to give any account of the several present Branches of the Family And yet after all Scaliger's confidence that there was no such Man upon Record do we find him expresly reckoned among our Saviour's nearest Kindred Mat. 13. 15. Is not this the Carpenters Son Is not his Mother called Mary And his Brethren James and Joses and Simon and Judas So blind is the humour of Criticising as to overlook the most obvious passages rather than loose the Glory of one new discovery This passage I have vindicated not because that it self was at all needful to my purpose but onely to maintain the credit of Hegesippus for if there were no such Story that saves our labour of giving any account of it if there were then we must take it as we finde it in Hegesippus according to whose account it was no Persecution for Religion but onely a jealousie of State Neither is it to be wondred at that Domitian though of all men most suspicious should be so strongly tainted with it when the same conceit had for a long time been of so great force among his Predecessours For it is very obvious from the Histories of those time that the Jewish Notion of their Messias had got deep footing in the Gentile World from the Authority of the Sybilline Oracles in that the Old Books of the Sybils that had been for many Ages Religiously preserved in the Capitol were together with the Capitol it self burnt about Eighty years before our Saviour's Birth and to retreive their loss three Ambassadours were about Seven years after when the Capitol was rebuilt dispatcht into Asia to gather together what Records they could there find of those Prophesies and brought back with them about a thousand Verses By whom they were first Composed I am not concern'd to enquire though it is probable as the Learned Isaac Vossius conjectures that they were Collected by the Jews out of the Ancient Prophets as appears from their agreement with the Holy Writings and especially in the great Prediction of a Messias or Universal Monarch Which it seems was so plainly foretold by them that in a little time it alarm'd the Senate it self to forbid the reading of them and that for very good reason too When they found every aspiring Spirit in the Common-wealth to apply them to himself For this was one of the Foundations of Catiline's Conspiracy as Tully informs us concerning Leutulus in his Third Oration against Catiline And when Caesar had made himself Master of all it was vulgarly believed to have been the effect of this Prophesie as the same Author Triumphantly tells us in his Second Book of Divination which was written immediately after Caesar's fall Cum Antistitibus agamus quidvis potius ex illis libris quà m Regem proferant quem Romae posthaec nec Dii nec homines esse patientur The great thing that offended the zealous Common-wealths Man in them was the name of a great King And if we may believe Suetonius or his Author Julius Marathus the same year that Augustus Caesar was Born the Senate upon the account of this Prediction Regem populo Romano naturam parturire that nature was then in labour with a King of the Romans Decreed nequis illo anno genitus educaretur Not unlike the practice of Herod when he Murther'd the Children of Bethlehem to secure the Title of Shiloh to himself which some of the Atheistical Jews of the Sect of the Sadducees had flatteringly applyed to him and were for that reason stiled Herodians And this conceit himself cherished with very great care among the Jews as the fulfilling of Jacob's Prophesie upon the departure of the Scepter from Judah to himself thereby to conciliate the greater reverence and Authority to his Government And this probably was the reason as very an Atheist as he was of his building so magnificent a Temple because the Jews expected such a glorious work from their Messias Now this conceit being so familiarly entertain'd in the minds of men in that Age it is no wonder if all that were in actual possession of Authority whether themselves believed it or not were so watchful against all pretenders to it but much less in such a suspicious Prince as Domitian especially as to the Family of David who by the consent of the Jews that were the great Masters of these Prophesies had the first Title to this great Prerogative And yet it was not so much but onely as far as appears by Story they were presented by some flattering and officious Informers to the Emperour which occasion'd some trouble both to themselves and the followers of Jesus but when the jealous Emperour came to enquire into their Claims he was so satisfied of the Innocence of the men that he immediately dismist the Inditement as frivolous and revoked all Edicts against the Christians as Partisans in the same cause This is the true account of all his proceedings against them though if he had proceeded upon other reasons all his reasons could be nothing but reasons of State and all his executions nothing but acts of Savageness and Cruelty But whatever they were there is no evidence of his entring into the merits of the cause and if he did not his brutal Tyranny can be no objection Nay if he did all that can be inferr'd is that Christianity was not pleasing to one of the worst of Princes and that is the best that can be made of his Persecution and there we leave it that as Nero was the first so Domitian was the second Enemy to Christianity and conclude with Tertullian Consulite commentarios vestros
raised against Christianity but as for that private Opposition that it met with from Philosophers and pretendedly learned Men it was so very contemptible that it scarce deserves consideration For though one would expect to have found all the learned World engaged in a Controversie that concern'd the whole World yet they were very few that concern'd themselves against the Christian Cause and those that did so onely pelted at it with remote and far-fetcht cavils but never came up to the matter of Fact which is the onely pertinent subject in this Enquiry and if that stand firm all other Opposition falls short of the Argument and breaks its own force upon it self by endeavouring to disparage the truth of a thing that it cannot deny or to prove the same thing to be false that it cannot but confess to be true Nay so far were they from putting the matter of Fact to the question that they were all forced to take it for granted Porphyry and Celsus impute our Saviour's Miracles to Magick Hieroles and Trypho say onely that the Christians make too much of them by making a God of a divine Man Julian tells us that he did no such great matters but onely cure the Lame and the Blind So that it seems none of them were at that time hardy enough so much as to think of controuling the reality of our Saviour's Actions for fear of too much disadvantage in the Controversie Now after this it is easie to foretell with what trifling pretences they must satisfie themselves and they were so very trifling that it-will require but very little pains to shew their Vanity All the Opposition then that was made to it this way proceeded meerly either from gross Superstition or avowed Atheism The first is coincident with the former account of the publick Persecutions and was nothing else than a meer fanatick zeal for the old Pagan Idolatry And this was chiefly managed by the Pythagoreans the onely superstitious Sect among all the Philosophers who were all along so zealous of the Grecian Rites that they may properly be styled the Monks and Friers of that Religion This humour they derived from their first Founder Pythagoras himself who having learned that part of natural Philosophy from Thales and Anaximander that explain'd the mechanical contrivances of Matter and Motion to which alone those Philosophers pretended he quickly perceived either by the sagacity of his own Mind or the instruction of Pherecides that there was some intelligent Being in Nature that was the cause of the order and harmony of Things And it was this that so strongly possest him with the notion of a Deity whom he defined to be a Mind diffused through all Nature from whom all things receive their Life and Activity As not being able to understand how the natural effects that are constantly and every where visible in the World could be brought to pass but by the present and immediate assistance of such a power And now having his Mind thus throughly touched with a sense of the Divinity and finding the Orphean Rites and Constitutions at that time the most sacred Solemnities of Religion in the World he grew very zealous of them as the most religious Symbols of Divine Worship Neither was his zeal satisfied with the superstition of his own Country but he travel'd into all parts of the World to inform himself of their several ways of worshipping their Gods And then composed a Service of his own partly out of the Orphean partly out of the AEgyptian partly out of the Chaldean partly out of the Eleusinian and partly to mention no more out of the Samothracian Rites which together with his own theurgick Ceremonies must make up a compleat Rhapsodie of all the Superstition and Idolatry of the Heathen World And though some of his Followers Leucippus Democritus and Epicurus apostatised so far from his Institution as to fall into the rankest and most audacious Atheism yet all that persevered in their Master's Discipline were sure no doubt to be most of all strict in his Religion And it was onely this Sect of Philosophers who were Men rather devout than learned that all along gave authority and reputation to the old Heathen Idolatry And therefore when Christianity began to bear it away it could not be expected but that they should appear the most forward Champions to defend their Fanes and their Temples their Altars and their Oracles against the new and prevailing Religion The first and the ablest Champion was Porphyrie a Man at that time eminent for Wit and Learning but so entirely eaten up with fanatick zeal for his Religion that he had not patience so much as to hear of any thing that opposed it and this set him all on fire against Christianity For being by nature of a fierce and angry temper insomuch as he attempted to cut his own Throat as he describes himself in the Life of Plotinus and withall very much inclined to Austerity and Devotion for he was a very strict observer of the Pythagorean Rules this fixt him in his fanatick and superstitious zeal than which there is nothing more insuperable Though when this happens to be join'd with a natural eagerness of temper it grows into meer fury and outrage and so transports Men out of the use of their natural Understandings And this seems to have been the case of Porphyrie not onely from that description that he gives of himself and that account that his Friends give of his Life but also by that Character that is given of his Writings against the Christians which is described by the most impartial Writers as full of rage and bitterness Though how he performed what he undertook is not so certainly determinable in that not onely his own Book but all those that were written against it are utterly perisht But by those fragments that remain of it in the Writings of the Ancients it does not at all appear that he ever ventur'd to deny the matter of Fact of our Saviour's Miracles but granted them so far as to impute them to the power of Magick But how vain that pretence is we have already shewn at least the whole of the Controversie depends upon the truth of the matters of Fact that are recorded of our Saviour none of which I do not find that he ever undertook to controul and as long as that stands firm all other Opposition is but trifling However he was a Person so infinitely superstitious that his Opinion can be no prejudice against the cause of Christianity because he was at no liberty to make any enquiry into the truth of its pretences And of the same Kidney was Hierocles especially if he were of which there is little doubt the same zealous Person that was first Judge at Nicomedia and afterward Prefect of AEgypt under Dioclesian and a great Agent in his bloody Persecution however he was a zealous Orphean and extreamly addicted to the old Pythagorick Superstition But whatever he was otherwise his work
as little as he gain'd by objecting the meanness of our Saviour's condition he gains just as much by insulting over their Ignorance that is but another enhancing circumstance of his Divine Authority For as it was a wonderful thing for so obscure a Person to make such an alteration in the World so was it much more so to effect it by such contemptible Instruments For no Man that ingenuously considers the prodigious success of the Apostles can ever impute it to any other cause than either some Divine and extraordinary Power or the great and irresistable evidence of the thing it self In that by the Objection it self it is plain that they were destitute of all the Arts of Eloquence and Learning by which it was possible that they might perswade or deceive the People into any belief Whereas if Jesus had chosen the Learned and the Eloquent for the propagation of his Doctrine he might have been justly suspected of the same design with the Philosophers of erecting a new Sect by the Power of wit and Rhetorick But when a few Fisher-men that wanted all the improvements of Learning and Education as the Evangelists Record and Celsus objects effected it with such prodigious success it is not conceivable how they should do it any other way than by Miracle either in their words or actions And thus all along the more they object the contemptibleness of the means the more the strangeness of the Event returns upon themselves so that if there had not been something more than Humane in the design it could never in the way in which it was Prosecuted have taken any effect In the Second Book the counterfeit Jew first rates his Country-men for quitting the Laws of their own Nation to follow this Innovatour But setting aside the answer of Origen that the Christians did by no means forsake the Religion of Moses but pursue and improve it Still this is short of the Argument and comes not up to the reasons for which they did it If they had none their lightness was justly blameable but whether they had or had not it concern'd not this Atheist to enquire And then this becomes Celsus the Jew and the Epicurean very well that when the Epicurean had begun his discourse with a disparagement of the Impostor Moses the Jew should make this an Argument against the Christians that they renounced the Man that his Friend had proved an Impostor In the next place when he objects our Saviour's Cowardise that he fled and hid himself and such other trash it is equal malice and folly without ground or pretence in that there was no History of Jesus extant beside the Evangelists who all affirm that he went up to Jerusalem purposely to deliver up himself into the hands of his Enemies Now sayes Origen I leave it to any Man of common sense to judge which is most reasonable to believe these unvouched and vagabond surmises invented out of meer hatred to the Christians or to believe things as they are deliver'd by the Evangelists who pretended either to have been Eye-witnesses or to have had a full information of the matter of fact and were ready to seal the truth of their Testimony with their blood This strange constancy and resolution even to death it self is not like Men who were conscious to themselves of having forged a false Story but on the contrary a clear and manifest Argument that they were serious and very well satisfied in the truth of the things that they Recorded Is not this then an ingenuous way of proceeding to oppose the truth of their History with flying Reports that have neither Author nor Authority and indeed such that whilst there is malice in the World no true Story can escape But sayes Celsus though he was pleased not openly to shew his Divinity before yet at least he ought to have done it by vanishing miraculously from the Cross. No no Celsus he had a farther design to demonstrate not onely his own Divinity but Man's Immortality If he had onely disappear'd you might have imputed that to a trick of Magick but when he arose from the dead after he had been so publickly executed this was both an undeniable proof of his Divine Authority and a full assurance to Mankind of their capacity to subsist after Death And though there were other indispensable reasons why he suffer'd himself to be sacrificed upon the Cross yet if it were for these alone he had sufficient reason to suffer what he did Especially when himself had through the whole course of his Life referr'd the proof of his Authority to his Resurrection so that if he had according to Celsus his advice withdrawn himself from the Cross he had apparently defeated his own design that he had laid through the whole History of the Gospel But beside this by his Death Passion and Resurrection he has demonstrated to Mankind that the Divine Providence has reserved the happiness of humane Nature to another Life and clear'd up the future existence of Souls by an undeniable Experiment And that is the thing that so much frets the Epicureans that he has put so clear a basfle upon their Impiety But as for his next Cavil he is really to be pitied when he asks Why we do not Worship all other crucified Malefactours It is an Objection worthy the wisedom and gravity of a learned Philosopher but yet for his satisfaction it is fit to let him know that we Worship all such Malefactours as our Saviour was who own'd himself to be the Son of God and then suffer'd himself to be murther'd to prove it by his Resurrection But he says his Disciples forsook him and would dye neither with nor for him They did so by sudden surprise but what did the same Disciples immediately after upon his Resurrection They that were but a little before seised with so much Cowardise feared then no danger to attest it to the World and most of them dyed for the truth of their Testimony So that this Objection of Cowardise in the Apostles is just such another advantageous circumstances to the cause of Christianity as that of their ignorance and want of learning For as it is an Argument of the great Evidence of their Cause when Men neither learned nor eloquent were able so successfully to propagate it among Mankind in that they could give it no more advantage than it brought along with it So when Men so timerous and cowardly should afterward grow so very fearless in asserting it even to the Death that is an unquestionable evidence that they were abundantly satisfied in the truth of what they attested But as for Celsus his insinuation that the Apostles onely dream't and fancied that they saw Jesus after his Resurrection as it may be applied to any matter of Fact in the World and turn even all the actions of his own Life into dream and fancy so if it be compared with all the peculiar circumstances as to this thing they prevent the folly
of so ridiculous a surmise And he has no ground to bear him out in it but onely his Epicurean conceit that the Resurrection from the dead is a thing impossible But as for that we will not dispute it with him at present though it is evident that according to the Principles both of their own and all Philosophy it is altogether as easie and conceivable as the generation of a Man The matter of Fact what has been is the onely Argument of our debate and we will not go so far about as to dispute its possibility when we have demonstrated its actual certainty And yet in the conclusion of all Celsus after he has taken so much pains and that in the Person of a Jew to prove the impossibility of a Resurrection is so wretchedly sottish as to declare his own belief of the Resurrection even of the Body to eternal Life and that the first proof and specimen of it is to be given to the World by the Messias In the third Book he begins to dispute in his own Person and first objects that the dispute between the Christians and Jews was of no moment in that both believed that there was to be a Saviour of the World and onely differ'd in this whether he were already come or were yet to come And yet this beside the gross absurdity of the Objection it self is a meer contradiction to all the former Discourse by the personated Jew For if the difference between the Jews and the Christians were so small as he pretends then all the sad out-cries and invectives of the Jew against the Christians were onely clamorous Nothings But this is objected like an Atheist that lookt upon these and all other differences about Religion as trifling Fooleries And therefore Origen in answer to it shews him the excellency of both in the Worship of the supreme Deity as opposed to the folly and impiety of the Heathen Idolatry But beside that as for the difference between the Jews and the Christians concerning our Saviour nothing but extreme ignorance could have objected its Vanity For is it nothing whether he were the promised Messias the Son of God the Saviour of the World the Judge of Mankind as the Christians believed or whether he were a bold Impostor that pretended to these great Titles onely by virtue of magick Art as the Jews believed If the first were true that commands the obedience of all Mankind to his Laws as the onely terms of Salvation and if so then nothing could more concern them than to be satisfied in its truth and reality So that it is so far from being a trifling Controversie as Celsus foolishly objects that there was never any Controversie started in the World of greater concernment to Mankind But the Epicurean's real meaning is that all Controversies about Religion are trifling because all Religion is a Cheat and if it be so then indeed it is but a childish thing to contend about it But otherwise if there be a Providence that governs the World then certainly if any thing in the World does it highly concerns all Men to inform themselves of those certain rules of Duty that he has prescribed to their practice But against both Religions the Epicurean objects that they began in Sedition the Jewish against the Egyptians and the Christian against the Jews But in the first he supposes the Jews to have been originally Egyptians which because it is a vain and proofless presumption can prove nothing And yet it is much more vain to charge Christianity with Sedition because all Sedition either designs or acts some violence against the Government whereas it is evident that our Saviour allowed no Weapons to his Followers but Sufferings and has threatned no one offence with greater severity than endeavours of disturbance to the civil State under pretence of Religion So that it is plain that if his Religion be true it could not have been brought in more inoffensively to the powers of the World And therefore it cannot with any ingenuity be charged with Sedition till its truth or falsehood be first determin'd For that is the onely Controversie in this matter which if Celsus and his Partisans had but the courage to undertake they would have had no need of these petty and remote reflections The next Cavil is that the Christians affected nothing but singularity Very likely this when so many of them travel'd into all parts of the World with the extreme hazard of their Lives to convert if it were possible all Mankind to Christianity But though they seem'd to agree at first they afterward divided into Factions But this is an objection against the levity of humane Nature not the truth or excellency of Christianity For beside what Origen answers that there was never any thing of great reputation in it self or usefulness to the World about which Men did not raise disputes and make parties I would onely ask him Whether supposing the truth of Christianity it was not in the power of Men to raise Controversies about it if it was then their doing so is no objection against it if it was not that is to say no Religion can be true unless it bring a fatal necessity upon all that pretend to it to be both wise and honest which is such an awkerd condition of things as destroys not onely all the Principles of Religion but of humane Nature it self But says he they scare the People with Fables and Bugbears Tell what says Origen beside future Rewards and Punishments We indeed believe that there is a sovereign Governour of Mankind and that hereafter he will sit in Judgment upon all our Actions And in this belief we instruct the People out of the holy Scriptures and exhort them to live as they ought that must give an account of themselves to the great Governour of the World These indeed are Fables to an Atheist and an Epicurean but not to any Man that believes any thing of the Providence of God or the Obligations of Religion And that is the thing that Celsus writes against not meerly Christianity onely he is fiercest in his opposition to that because it is so full a check to his impiety though otherwise the main of his Objections that he levels against that aim as directly against all Religion And thus the Bugbears of a future State with which he here upbraids Christianity are common to all Mankind but onely his own Sect. And though he would make us believe that he would not for all the World take away the Opinion of Rewards and Punishments in the next Life this Vizor is too ridiculously put upon an Epicurean 't is too gross a contradiction to himself and he renounces his first Principle to impose upon the People but though they indeed may easily be imposed upon by any thing as they were by his Master Epicurus who frequented their publick Sacrifices to make himself sport at home with the folly of their Superstition yet he should never
and transactions of his Life were open and conspicuous to the World he laid not the scene of his actions in a dark unknown or undiscover'd corner of the Earth but he appear'd in one of the most eminent places of all Asia all his Works were perform'd amidst his Enemies and he chose the Jews the most jealous and the most prejudiced People in the World for the Eye-witnesses of his Miracles and the Companions of his Conversation But above all Jerusalem it self the most famous City at that time in that part of the World was the scene of his most publick Actions there it was that he was put to death in the presence not onely of that City but of the whole Nation there it was that he rose from the dead there it was that his Disciples first publisht his Resurrection and there it was that some of them wrought undeniable Miracles in proof of the Divinity of his Power and the Truth of their own Testimony And Origen has observed very well that the publick Death of Jesus in the sight of all the People of the Jews was design'd by the Divine Providence as an advantageous circumstance to demonstrate the truth of his Resurrection for if it had been private and not notorious to all the Nation though he had afterward risen from the dead as he did the obscurity of his Death might have been pleaded against the certainty of his Resurrection But beside the notoriety of the matter of Fact among the Jews the strange Stories that were reported of him in a little time fill'd the World with noise and wonder No Affair in that Age was more talked of than the Story of Jesus of Nazareth every body made enquiry into the circumstances of his Actions and they were exposed to the malice of the Jews and the curiosity of the Philosophers There was never Man born as Eusebius observes upon whose account the whole World was so much concern'd as upon that of Jesus of Nazareth Mankind being as it were at first divided concerning him so that the controversie is not improperly styled by Nicephorus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the struggling and concussion of the World Now 't is a likely matter and worthy our belief that a few simple and illiterate persons should have the confidence but much more the ability to perswade the World into the belief of a Legend so palpable and so obnoxious to contradiction That they should be so impudent as to begin to publish the strange Story of his Life and stranger one of his Resurrection even in Jerusalem it self and amidst his most implacable Enemies where though it were so easie to discover the bold and manifest cheat if a cheat at all that yet it should pass without any contradiction of the matter of Fact and meet with such prodigious and unparallel'd entertainment in the Minds of so many thousands of its Inhabitants Certainly they must have been puissant and irresistible Arguments wherewith they could so briskly bear down and vanquish Jewish stubbornness Their prejudices were too strong to be overcome by any weaker proof than evident and undeniable demonstration and had they not brought some such thing along with them they might to as much purpose have preached to the Stones of the Temple as to the People of Jerusalem But that I say is the wonder that they should first publish this strange story in the very place where it was acted and yet if it were false not onely escape being convicted of Forgery which it was impossible they should upon supposition of its being false but force great numbers of Persons against their most stubborn prejudices to own and submit to the truth of their Relation and from that very place in a short time to propagate the belief of it all the World over This is the thing that I affirm not to be at all possible in the course of humane Affairs that a matter of Fact of such a nature and under these circumstances if really and indeed false should ever gain so great a belief of its being true I will grant that Mankind may be imposed upon in matters of meer Opinion as much as any Man can require but matter of Fact is of a quite different nature that depends not so much upon Mens Understandings as their Senses and the Senses of all Mankind are alike here is no difference between the learned and the unlearned And though a false Story may for a while be imposed upon the common People yet unless it appear to prove it self true with an evidence proportionable to its weight it either dyes and vanishes of its own accord or is convicted of Forgery by the more wise and judicious when they come to enquire into its grounds and pretences And yet this Story the more it was enquired into the more firmly it was believed and learned Men every where and of all persuasions when they came to examine into it could not bring their Minds to any issue concerning it till at length they were forced to resign up themselves to its full belief I have indeed heard some witty Gentlemen as our phantastick Age very much abounds with such shrew'd persons compare the first propagation of Christianity in those parts of the World with that of the late growth and spreading of the folly of Quakerism in England than which nothing could be more enormously surmised for setting aside a thousand other defects in the comparison it is notorious that that wild and enthusiastick Sect did not set up upon the pretence of a new Revelation but onely pretended to raise some foolish and fanatique conceits of their own upon supposition of the truth of an old one But if the leaders of that Rabble when they first appear'd about thirty years since at York and Bristol had pretended to have wrought in those great Cities such kind of Miracles as are recorded of our Saviour and his Apostles no Man can doubt but that they had been long since buried in contempt and oblivion And yet that is the case of Christianity that such a matter of Fact as that was gain'd such a firm belief in the place where it was first published and acted too and from thence all the World over onely by the undeniable evidence of its own Proofs and Miracles For the Men of that Age were every whit as cautious and incredulous as the Wits of ours and as I shall shew anon their Minds were prepossest with stronger prejudices of Atheism and Infidelity How then could this Story of Jesus prevail so effectually upon them but by the undeniable evidence of its truth and certainty and when it carried with it nothing in the World whereby it might bribe their belief nay when it labour'd under all other objections but onely evidence of Truth I will challenge any sober Man to frame any the least tolerable Hypothesis how it was so much as possible that it should prevail had not its truth been vouched by the most undoubted and