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
affirms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he quite vanisht away at last he onely says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he went away and this though he would seem to affirm that it was after a wonderfull manner and no body knows how is a pitifull abatement to the bigness of his former expression vanishing away Though the truth is if he had stood to it it must unavoidably have proved it self a Lye for it is utterly incredible that so strange a thing as that should have been done in so great a presence as that and yet never any notice be taken of it But in the last place the Historian would fain bid at something of his Hero's appearing after Death yet he does it so faintly that in the conclusion of all it comes to nothing especialy when he tells us that the time of his Death was altogether unknown and that the uncertainty of it took in no less than the compass of thirty years and then they that were so utterly at a loss as to the time of his decease and that for so long a space were likely to give a very wise account of the certain time of any thing that he did after it But how or to whom did he appear Why to a young Man one of his Followers that doubted of the Immortality of the Soul for ten months together after his Death But how or where Why the young Man being tired with watching and praying to Apollonius that he would appear to him onely to satisfie him in this point one day fell into a dead sleep in the School where the young Men were performing their several Exercises and on the sudden starts up in a great fright and a great sweat crying out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I believe thee O Tyanaeus And being asked by his Companions the meaning of his transport Why says he do you not see Apollonius They answer him no but that they would be glad to give all the World that they could 'T is true says he for he onely appears to me and for my satisfaction and is invisible to all others and so tells them what he had said to him in his sleep concerning the state of Souls This poor account of a Dream and a Vision of an over-watched Boy is all that this great Story affords to vye with our Saviour's Resurrection And now upon review of this whole History it seems evident to me that this Man was so far from being endued with any extraordinary or Divine Power that he does not deserve the reputation of an ordinary Conjurer For though Huetius has taken some pains to prove him so yet he gives no evidence of it beside the Opinion of the common People and if that were enough to make a Conjurer there is no Man of an odd and a singular humour as Apollonius affected to be who is not so thought of by the common People And therefore when he was accused for it before Domitian the Emperour when he came to hear the cause slighted both him and his accusers and dismist him the Court for an idle and phantastick fellow And it is manifest from the whole series of his History that he was a very vain Man and affected to be thought something extraordinary and so wander'd all the World over in an odd Garb to be gazed at and admired and made himself considerable in that Age by Wit Impudence and Flattery of all which he had a very competent share But for his Wonder-working Faculty which he would needs pretend to he fetcht that as far off as the East Indies that is the farthest off as he thought from confutation And yet the Account that he has given of those parts is so grosly fabulous that that alone convicts his whole Life of imposture and impudence And this may suffice to make good this part of the demonstration of our Saviour's Divine Authority from the certain Evidence both of his own and his Apostles Miracles and to set it above the reach of all manner either of Objection or Competition § XXVIII But though the History of Jesus of Nazareth have this advantage of all others in that the Tradition whereby it has been conveyed down to us has proved the truth of its own Testimony by plain and undeniable Miracles yet if we set aside this peculiar Divine Attestation and consider the Tradition by it self as meerly Humane and deliver'd down in the ordinary course of things it has been so constant so catholick and so uninterrupted as to be its own demonstration For if there had been no such thing as the Story of Jesus of Nazareth in that Age there could never have been any such Tradition or if there were it was so early that if it had been false it must immediately have perished as a manifest Lye in that when it comes so near the very time in which the thing it self was acted nothing but undoubted Truth could ever have maintain'd its Authority For though it is easie at a distance to tell strange stories of the times of old as we find by those many idle and incredible Legends added to the History of the primitive Church in the after-ages of ignorance and superstition yet to raise a story so strange and remarkable as that of Jesus of Nazareth and his Apostles without any ground or foundation for it nay against the certain knowledge of those who lived in the place where it was first broacht and to gain Proselytes to such a notorious Fiction is a thing not possible in the course of humane Affairs For to pass by all the other disadvantages that I have already represented that this Tradition must labour under if it rise not up to the very time that it pretends to especially that of its being a matter of Fact which must unavoidably have destroyed it if false that which I have already proposed and come now to prosecute seems as insuperable as any of the rest viz. That great numbers of learned and wise Men who lived in the Ages next and immediately after it should after the strictest enquiry concerning its truth not onely suffer themselves to be imposed upon by so late and palpable a Fiction but lay down their Lives in defence of it This is not credible unless they were fully assured of the undoubted certainty of the thing it self and their assurance alone is to us a sufficient demonstration of it But though that be enough yet I will undertake more viz. To give an account of the grounds and reasons of their Assurance by tracing up the certain Tradition of the thing it self to the very times of the Apostles and from them deriving it down to after-ages through the hands of wise learned and judicious Men and that as I take it will make a new and distinct demonstration of the infallible certainty of the Christian Faith Now this Tradition is conveyed two manner of ways either by a succession of Churches or of single Persons First by a succession of Churches and
same time and laid down their Lives out of that undoubted assurance they had of its truth and certainty We may now with much more reason doubt of what was done to his late Majesty in January 1648. than they could at that time of the Testimony of the Apostles concerning the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Neither did the current of this Tradition stop here in the Corinthian Church but as it came down from the first Witnesses so it descended in the same chanel to after-times for as the Apostolical Writings are own'd by this Epistle so is this Epistle by those who could not but be certain of its Authority especially Dionysius Bishop of that Church to whom it was written for as Saint Clement's Epistle was written not long after the time of the Apostles probably in the Reign of Domitian so was that of Dionysius written not at a greater distance from Saint Clemens for he flourished in the time of M. Aurelius and had full assurance of its being authentick from its having been constantly read in the Corinthian Church So that the Tradition of the Apostles Testimony was as certain in that Church in the time of that Emperour who began his Reign about the year 161. as it was in their own time so that if the Corinthians who lived in the time of Dionisius had been contemporary to the Apostles themselves they could not have had a more satisfactory and unquestionable information of the truth of those things that they preached than was given them from so clear and uninterrupted a Tradition for that being so entirely free from all manner of doubt and suspicion the distance of time made no alteration as to the certainty of the thing § XXX To the Testimony of this Apostolical Man we may joyn that of Ignatius Policarp Papias and Quadratus as having all conversed with the followers and familiars of our Saviour And first as for Ignatius he was educated under the Apostles themselves and by them constituted Bishop of the great City of Antioch where he sate many years and govern'd his charge with extraordinary zeal and prudence and at last with infinite courage and alacrity suffer'd Martyrdom for the Testimony of his Faith There have been great Controversies of late in the Christian World concerning his Epistles though with how little reason on their side that oppose them I have accounted elsewhere and though I shall by and by make use of their Authority and make it good too yet our present Argument is not concern'd in that dispute for whether these Epistles that at this time pass under his name be genuine or counterfeit it is certain that there was such a Man and that he wrote such Epistles and if so then he is another competent Witness of the truth of the Apostolical Testimony and his great sense of Immortality and earnest desire of Martyrdom shew his great assurance of our Saviour's Resurrection upon which they were founded so that he is another undoubted Witness of the Apostolical Tradition viz. That the Christian Faith descended from the Apostles and that they gave that proof of their Testimony that is recorded of them in the holy Scriptures And by his Testimony of the truth of all that Christianity pretends to is the Tradition of the Apostles connected with the certain History of after-times so as to leave no dark and unknown Interval wherein the Story pretended to have been formerly acted by the Apostles might have been first obtruded upon the World but on the contrary to make it undeniably evident that there could never have been any such Story had it not first descended from the Apostles But though this be enough to my purpose for attesting the truth of the Apostolical History by such a near and immediate Witness to make the Tradition of the Church certain and uninterrupted yet I will not wave that advantage that I have from this glorious Martyr's Epistles because they breathe so much the genuine spirit of the ancient Christianity especially as to the undoubted assurance of a future Immortality which shews what mighty satisfaction they had of the reality of the thing that they so firmly believed and so vehemently desired And as for the Epistles themselves they are so strongly and unanimously attested by the Records of the ancient Church that they had never been so much as question'd but for their resolute Opposition to some Mens Prejudices for they being resolved in their own Innovation of Church-government contrary to that of the Apostolical and primitive Constitution which these Epistles so zealously assert and that as establisht by the command of God and thereby made necessary to the peace of the Christian Church they had no way left but stubbornly I ought to have said impudently to reject their Authority But alas that is so admirably vouched as if the Providence of God had purposely design'd to secure their credit for ever And particularly in the first place by his Friend Policarp who sent a Copy of them to the Church of Philippi with a Letter of his own now Policarp's Epistle was never question'd nay it was for some hundred years after publickly read in the Churches of Asia how then is it possible to avoid so clear and certain a Testimony as this they have no other way but onely by saying that this particular passage was foisted in without any shadow of ground for the surmise nay contrary to the common sense of Mankind that an Epistle so universally known to the learned and the unlearned should be so easily corrupted and the corruption never taken notice of and when this counterfeit passage was thrust into it contrary to the faith of all the publick Books it should pass down uncontroul'd and unquestion'd to all after-ages Nay farther if it were forged it must have been before the time of Eusebius who gives an account of it and believes it genuine and yet himself affirms that it was at his time publickly read in Churches as Saint Jerome afterwards that it was in his now it is a very probable thing that Eusebius would be imposed upon by one private Copy contrary to the faith of all the publick Books or that he should impose the mistake upon all that followed him when the same Books were preserved in the same publick manner till the time of Saint Jerome But beside this they have another shift altogether as groundless and not less bold viz. That it is true that there had been such Epistles of Ignatius that Policarp speaks of but that a little before Eusebius his time the true ones were lost and a counterfeit Copy put upon the World which as it is nothing but meer conjecture for the sake of a desperate cause and void of all pretence of probability so it is incredible in it self and not possible in the course of humane Affairs that such a famous Writing of such an ancient and apostolical Bishop of such an eminent and glorious Martyr written at such a time at the
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
up to the very Beginning that if it had not the Beginning that it pretends to it could never have had any Tradition And therefore I shall onely desire the Reader to suppose himself as near to the time of our Saviour as he is to the Reign of Henry the Eighth and then to consider with himself which way it was possible that there should over have been any such thing as the pretence of Christianity in the World if it had not come with all those miraculous proofs of Divine Authority that it pretends to And that I hope if it be made out is satisfaction enough to any reasonable nay to any unreasonable Man It is needless here to trouble the Reader with any farther Account of the particulars of my Argument because if he desire a view of them beforehand they are all distinctly drawn up in the following Schemes of the Contents of the several Sections Where all the chief materials of the whole Discourse may be seen though not the connexion of its parts with each other I have no more to say but onely to desire the Reader to peruse the whole with the same honest and impartial mind wherewith it was written for I will assure him that I have given the Cause no more advantage than that has given me And as I may challenge my Reader 's Honesty so I must his Ingenuity too viz. That whereas I have built my whole Argument upon matter of Fact so he would receive every matter of Fact onely as I have presented it For some things and indeed very nigh all that I have urged I insist upon as undoubted Records and demonstrative Proofs yet some few there are that I have onely propounded problematically and have asserted them not because I thought them any way necessary to the Argument which though they were granted to be false stands unshaken upon its own undeniable evidence but because I thought them more than probable Conjectures which if true might reflect some little glimmering light upon the main demonstration Neither indeed do I mention them of my own choice or urge them as any part of my positive proof but onely bring them in by way of objection in answer to the humoursome singularity of some learned Men who of late affect out of I know not what vain ostentation to disparage what in them lies the Records of the Christian Church and the Evidences of the Christian Faith Of whom the learned Mr. Vossius thus justly complains Profecto nullos Religio Christiana infensiores habet hostes quà m ipsos Christianos cum vix ullum apud antiquos de Christo aut Vaticinium aut Testimonium invenias quod non complures etiam doctissimi viri labefactare aut etiam penitus evertere fuerint Conati The Christian Religion has met with no Enemies so fierce as Christians themselves when so many learned Men have made it their business to discredit and if it be possible to destroy every Prophesie and every Record that might do it service And this he speaks with regard to the old Sybilline Verses which some of late have so confidently rejected with a scornfull reflection upon the credulity of the ancient Fathers though beside those miserable slight pretences that they have for their confidence it is undeniably evident from the very Books themselves that they were composed by some body out of the Writings of the ancient Prophets so that these critical Gentlemen might when ever they are disposed to it as reasonably fleer at the Original Prophesies as at these Translations of them And this is clear enough as to all those passages that are quoted in the Writings of the ancient Fathers and that is more than enough to justifie their sincerity but it is by no means ingenuous or indeed honest to load their credit as some learned Men have done with the forgeries of later and barbarous times But the things that I chiefly intend in this Premonition are the Testimony of Josephus concerning our Saviour the reconciling him with Saint Luke about the Tax of Cyrenius the Testimony of Phlegon concerning the Eclipse at the Passion the Letter of Pontius Pilate to Tiberius the Therapeutae in Philo whether they were Christians and lastly the story of Agbarus King of Edessa All which I first intended to prosecute rather as digressions than as any direct part of my Argument and therefore though they all prove true as I think they do yet I cared not to lay any argumentative stress upon them because the evidence of their truth is so weak and dusky in comparison of that undoubted and noon-day certainty of the other matters of Fact upon which I have founded my demonstration But finding a fantastick and unnecessary coyness in our great Professours of critical Learning against the foremention'd particulars and that upon reasons very far short of that great confidence wherewith they are pleased to vote them down I thought it would not be altogether unseasonable to give some little check to this light and wanton humour by shewing that these stories were not so improbable as these Men would force us to believe nay by proving that they are very good and authentick Records notwithstanding all that they have been able to object against them As for the Testimony of Josephus it is well known with what an unanimous cry of the whole Pack it has been run down and yet upon such lamentable pretences as would rather amaze than startle any Man to consider them so that I must profess that upon the utmost enquiry that I can make I cannot see any the least ground to doubt of that particular passage more than of any other in the whole History of Josephus And therefore though I at first intended to use it onely as an accessional proof yet it does more service than I expected from it and by its own force makes its own way into the main body of my Argument and stands there as unmovable as any other Testimony whatsoever The Reconciliation of Saint Luke and Josephus is endeavour'd onely to prevent a critical Objection for though it cannot reasonably be required in a matter so remote and in a time of so much variety of civil Action as was the Reign of Augustus that we should be able to give an exact account of the time and circumstances of every particular Affair and make an agreement among all Writers about it Yet when both these stories may be made to run clear together onely by making one easie conjecture and mending one obvious mistake I thought it could not be amiss to propose it to the Reader 's satisfaction As for the Testimonies of Phlegon and Pontius Pilate I cannot see any the least ground of calling the truth of either into question beside this that the Criticks have got the Itch. And as for Philo's Therapeutae being Christians his description of them agrees so exactly to the state of the Primitive Church that it cannot without manifest violence be applied to any other
party of Men so that I take it to be as full a Testimony as any the most undoubted Record of the Christian Church and in this I am since the writing of it very much confirm'd by an excellent Discourse that I have met with upon that Argument in Dr. Beveridge his learned and judicious Defence of the Apostolical Canons against all the Dalleans Lib. 3. cap. 5. And in the last place as for the Edessean story I will because I would not be too retentive grant that it may be more qucstionable than any of the other For though there is not the least ground of suspecting the Integrity of Eusebius when he protests that he translated it out of the publick Records of the City upon which alone I ground my proof yet it is not impossible but that story might have been foisted into the Records themselves and that this learned Man might with too much greediness have swallowed such a strange and surprising story At least he could not have that opportunity of making that exact enquiry into its truth that he did into the other ancient Records of the Christian Church because it stood singly by it self and could not as the others were be vouched by concurrent Writers so that though it were not easie to impose upon Eusebius with any forgery thrust upon the Greek Church yet even he was no more able as having no better means to judge of the truth of a Record so remote than any other Person less learned And this I say not because I see any ground to suspect it of forgery but because I am not willing to lay too great a stress upon it upon the score of its solitude and privacy For otherwise the weightiest Objections that are made against it are too light to weigh any thing in my Opinion These are the two chiefest First a passage in our Saviour's Letter taken out of the Gospel of Saint John when the Gospel it self was not as yet written Secondly such a mistake in Chronology as antedates our Saviour's Passion three years But as for the first viz. Blessed art thou O Agbarus who though thou hast not seen yet believest on me for it is written of me That They who see should not believe and they who see not should believe and be saved This passage is of a quite different sense from our Saviour's words in Saint John chap. 20. v. 29. Jesus saith unto him Thomas because thou hast seen me thou hast believed blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed Where seeing and believing are not opposed as in the former words to Agbarus but believing upon that rational Evidence which our Saviour had given the World of his Divine Commission without that certainty of sight that Thomas had is preferr'd as more ingenuous and commendable But secondly it is evident from the words themselves that our Saviour quotes them not as an historical Record but as a prophetick Prediction and therefore uses the same form of speech that he does in the Evangelists as often as he applies the Prophesies of the Old Testament to himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is written of me i. e. it is foretold But then the difficulty will be where to find out this Prophesie Valesius has spied out a passage as he thinks somewhat like it in the sixth of Isaiah but as the passage it self is very obscure and cannot without too unnatural a force be brought to parallel this saying so I think it needless to accommodate the saying it self to any particular Prophesie when it agrees so fully with all those innumerable Predictions concerning the stubbornness and infidelity of the Jews among whom our Saviour conversed and the wonderfull conversion of the Gentile World to his Faith who were strangers to his Person and Conversation Infinite are the passages to this purpose in the holy Evangelists especially as to the strange unbelief of the Jews which is every where represented as a thing so monstrously stupid as if no other account could be given of it than by the utter loss of the use of their Eyes and Ears as if they neither saw nor heard those things that were daily said and done in their presence And therefore it is no wonder if our Saviour use this saying of himself without alluding to any particular Text when it is so exactly suted to the whole Tenour of all the ancient Prophesies concerning his entertainment in the World As for the other Objection if it could be certain it might be of some moment but chronological mistakes are so very easie and indeed in length of time unavoidable that all Histories would be overrun with them were we not directed either by some other passages in the History it self or by some other contemporary Writers to find out the faults and mistakes crept into the Copies So that in such a singular story as this if there should be any mistake of a Transcriber we have no means to correct it And that it is actually so in this case is evident from the great variety of Copies that are so strangly different that learned Men could never make any probable conjecture of the certain time of their date till Valesius referred it to the Edessean account But then say they according to that it must have hapned in the 15 th year of Tiberius whereas learned Men are now agreed that our Saviour suffer'd not till the 18 th after which time Thaddaeus must have come to Edessa But be it so yet the difficulty is very easily solvable for if the date in Eusebius refer as it is most probable it should to the time of our Saviour's writing it falls in exactly enough with the 15 th of Tiberius in which our Saviour first publickly enter'd upon the exercise of his Office and went to the Passover at Jerusalem where Proselytes of all Nations were then assembled and whither some might as well repair from Edessa and the parts about it as the Eunuch from Ethiopia from whom King Agbarus might receive his information concerning Jesus the same year especially when the account of the Edessean year commenced from the Autumnal Equinox which was a considerable time from the Passover and might take in a great part of the year following and so include the second Passover So that if this account be applied to the main transaction between our Saviour and Agbarus and not to the coming of Thaddaeus as Valesius has done to Edessa which was but an Appendix to it the Chronology is very punctual and therefore upon the whole matter I can as yet see no reason to suspect the Record of forgery and that is all that I undertake viz. To vindicate it from the confident but groundless exceptions of learned Men and desire them till they can produce some more material demurrs against it that its plea may be admitted Though otherwise because it is a single and unassisted Testimony I should be wary of laying any more stress upon it than as it
unprofitable cheat but yet however one would think Racks and Gibbets would have spoil'd the frolick And it is highly credible that any Men but much more these Men who have given us no ground to suspect their integrity because they could have no motive to forgoe it should prevaricate after such an odd and extravagant manner with Mankind yes and themselves too And when so many plain and simple Men so apparently without Craft and without Design without Advantage without Interest have given the World the most unquestionable proofs that they were serious and in good earnest as to the certain truth and reality of what they related after all this what wise and wary Man would not suspect the Forgery and disbelieve the Relation But this Argument I find prosecuted by Eusebius with extraordinary acuteness both of Wit and Reason Supposing says he that our Saviour never wrought any of those Miracles that are unanimously reported of him by his Disciples we must then suppose that they enter'd into Covenant among themselves after this manner Men and Brethren what that Seducer was that lived among us t'other day and how justly he suffer'd Death for his vile Imposture we of all Men have most reason to know and though others that were less intimately acquainted with him and his ways of deceiving might have some opinion of his worth and honesty yet we that were the daily Companions of his Conversation saw nothing in him answerable to the greatness of his pretences but that his whole design was by all the boldest Arts of Craft and Hypocrisie to get a Name in the World and therefore let us one and all join hands and enter into solemn Covenant among our selves to propagate the Belief of this impudent Cheat among Mankind and to fain all manner of Lies for its Confirmation to swear that we saw him restore Eyes to the Blind Ears to the Deaf and Life to the Dead and though it be all impudently false yet let us confidently report it nay and stand too it to the last drop of our Blood And because after all his great and glorious Pretences of being no less than the Son of God he was at last executed as a vile Malefactour with all the circumstances of shame and dishonour we must agree among our selves upon some Lie to wipe off this disgrace Let us therefore resolve to affirm with an undaunted impudence that after he was thus dishonourably Crucified the third Day he arose again and often conversed with us in the same familiar way as he had always done before his Execution But then we must be sure to stand unalterably to the impudence of the Lie and to persevere to Death it self in its assertion For what absurdity is there in throwing away our Lives for nothing And why should any Man think it hard to suffer Stripes Racks Bonds Imprisonments Reproaches Dishonurs and Death it self for no reason at all Let us therefore unanimously and vigorously set our selves to the design and with one consent agree to report such impudent Falshoods as are of no advantage either to our selves or to those we deceive or to him for whose sake we deceive Neither let us be content to propagate this Lie onely among our own Country-men but let us resolve to spread it through all parts of the habitable World impose new Laws upon all Nations overthrow all their old Religions command the Romans to quit the Gods of their Ancestours the Greeks to renounce the Wisedom of their Philosophers and the Egyptians the pretended Antiquity of their Superstition Neither will we take the pains to overthrow these ancient Customs of the most polite and most powerfull Nations in the World by the force of Learning or Wit or Eloquence but by the meer Authority of our crucified Master Neither will we stop here but we will travel to all barbarous Nations in the World reverse all their ancient Laws and command their obedience to a new Religion and this let us resolve to go through with an undaunted courage and resolution For it is not an ordinary reward that we expect for our Impudence nor is it for vulgar Crowns and Trophies that we engage our selves in such hard and hazardous enterprises No no we are sure to meet with the utmost severity of the Laws in all places whereever we come and the truth is we deserve it for disturbing the publick Settlement onely to establish a ridiculous Cheat and Imposture But for this who would not endure all the torments in the World burning hanging beheading crucifying and being torn in pieces by wild Beasts All which we must as we will secure the honour of the Impostor encounter with a cheerfull and resolved Mind For what can be more praise-worthy than to abuse God and affront Mankind to no purpose and to reap no other benefit from all our labours beside the pleasure of vain foolish and unprofitable lying And for that alone will we blaspheme all the Religions that have been from the beginning of the World to gain worship to a crucified Malefactour nay we will lay down our Lives for his Reputation notwithstanding that we know him to have been an impudent Impostor and for that reason is it that we honour him so highly because he has put such a dishonourable abuse upon our selves Who would not doe or suffer any thing for the sake of so vile a Man Who would not undergo all manner of Sufferings for a Cause that himself knew to be meer falshood and forgery And therefore let us constantly to the last breath averr that he raised the Dead cleansed Lepers cast out Devils and wrought all manner of Miracles though we are conscious to our selves of the gross falshood of the whole Story that we have meerly forged out of our own brains And therefore let us deceive as many as we can and if people will not be deceived yet however we shall sometime or other enjoy the pleasure of suffering and perhaps of dying for an unprofitable Lie It is no doubt credible that Men should discourse and act after such an extravagant rate as this or that humane Nature that has above all other Creatures an high sense of the love of Life and Self preservation should thrust it self upon a voluntary Death without any motive or any reward or if they should that when so great a multitude had agreed among themselves to carry on such a frantick design they should all persevere in the Lie to the very Death and not one of them be wrought upon by all the threatnings and all the slatteries in the World to betray the Plot and yet this was the case of the Apostles if their Testimony were not true So that it is plain that there is no more required to demonstrate the truth of the Christian Cause against Infidelity than onely to suppose that the Apostles were Men. And that certainly is as modest and moderate a Postulatum as can be premised to any Question And yet that onely being
may suffice at this present upon this Argument as far as it concerns the Apostles and first Preachers of Christianity That if they were not absolute Fools they had never undertaken it if false and if they were they could never have proceeded with any success in it § VI. But lastly We must either suppose the Apostles and first Witnesses of Christianity to have been in good earnest or not If they were then the truth of their Testimony is unquestionable For the matter of Fact of which they pretended to have been Eye-witnesses was no Magick Story or any thing capable of jugling Tricks and Illusions but a plain and common Object of Sense of which they had the same Assurance as we have or can have of any thing that we see or hear And they had the same Evidence of our Saviour's Refurrection as we are capable of having of one anothers Conversation And what is more they were jealous and incredulous and suspected some Mistake or Illusion and forced him to appeal to the Judgment and convince them by the Testimony of all their Senses And now 't is likely when it was so impossible that they should be deceived themselves that they would take so much pains and endure so many Miseries to perswade the World to believe an impudent and an unprofitable Fable Which if they did then we must suppose that they were not in good earnest and if they were not then beside all the foremention'd Abfurdities this Supposition labours under one very enormous difficulty peculiar to it self viz. that such profligate Cheats and Impostors should concern themselves with so much zeal as they did for the credit and propagation of Vertue and Goodness in the World For that it is the design of Christianity to promote and advance the practice of all true Morality no Man that understands what it is can question and if it be then they could be no other than good Men that labour'd as the Apostles did in promoting of Christianity But that perhaps you will say is a frequent Artifice for Men of the worst Designs to make the best Pretences It is so but then they must have some Design to carry on under their Pretences whereas if the Apostles very Pretence were not their real Design they had none at all And that is the difficulty proper to this Supposition that wicked Men that were conscious to themselves of their own Wickedness should spend their Days and loose their Lives for the interest and advancement of Goodness with out any design or advantage to themselves And therefore as from the former Premises we have sufficient reason to conclude the Integrity of the Men and from the Integrity of the Men to prove the Divinity of their Master's Doctrine so in this place does the Divinity of his Doctrine prove the Integrity of the Men. For as they pretended to have seen the Works so to have heard the Sermons of Jesus and were not less zealous to publish the one than the other to the World nay they divulged his Miracles onely for the sake of his Doctrines Now what was it that he taught and they recorded Are they not the most perfect Rules of Vertue and Holiness that were ever delivered to Mankind And as wonderfull as his Actions were his Precepts were scarce less admirable The Goodness of his Laws if it does not outdoe yet it equals the Greatness of his Miracles and their own innate Excellency is one of the strongest Arguments of their Divinity But of this I hope to give an Account in a Treatise by it self in which I shall make it apparent that he has commanded all the Laws of Nature and right Reason that he has not omitted any Instance of moral Goodness and that no Law nor no Philosophy can so much as pretend to a Morality so wise so good so usefull And now if the truth of our Saviour's Doctrine and his Miracles rely upon the same Testimony and the same Persons who report that he did such mighty Works record also that he taught such excellent Laws and that he wrought those Works of God for a proof and confirmation of his Divine Authority what can be more probable than that the same Persons should in the same Design be guilty of the greatest Vertue and greatest Villany in the World and at the same time sacrifice their Lives and Fortunes to the Interest of Vertue and Holiness and the Credit of Blasphemy and Imposture For if those things that they report concerning the Miracles and Resurrection of our Saviour are not true then was he as lewd and wretched an Impostor as ever appear'd in the World in bearing out as if he were the Son of God and Saviour of the World and they as bold atheistical and ungodly Wretches knowingly to abuse Mankind with such a palpable and blasphemous Cheat. Is it not then likely that Men should doe and suffer after their rate for the propagation of an accursed Imposture that were so infinitely zealous for the concernment of Truth and Integrity How awkerdly do these things piece together What strange Contradictions are reconciled in this odd Supposition The same Men dye Martyrs to the worst Imposture and best Institution in the World To lay down their Lives to gain credit to what themselves knew to be a notorious Lye and yet dye to advance the credit of Uprightness and Integrity 'T is none of the most conceivable things in the World that so many plain and simple People should conspire together in the contrivance of so lewd a Forgery and then seal the truth of the Fable with their Bloud but how does the Prodigy heighten that such profligate Wretches should so easily foregoe their Lives rather than their Innocence and Integrity So that it is plain that their zeal for the Interest of Truth and Goodness is a most undeniable Demonstration of the faithfulness of their Testimony And the more Men tumble and toss their Thoughts about to raise jealousies and suspicions upon the Report the more do they entangle themselves in Absurdities and Contradictions But I shall prosecute this Argument no farther because in truth to say no more he must be a very odly conceited Man that can but perswade himself so much as to suspect that the Apostles were not in good earnest And now if we review these Circumstances of our Saviour's Story as it was told by the Apostles 't is favourd with all the utmost advantages of Credibility So that if it be possible to suppose it an Imposture yet had it been the Truth of God 't is not to be supposed how it could have been vouched with stronger and more enforcing motives of Belief There is no Satisfaction that Mankind can reasonably desire which God in his infinite Goodness and Wisedom has not given to the truth of the Christian Faith All Scruples and Exceptions are so fortunately prevented that there is not any possible escape or pretence left for Insidelity For first We have all the Assurance in
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
in the Gospel that other Historians are concern'd to record as well as the Christians are exactly true that is at least a very fair probability that the Christian Writers were faithfull in those other Relations that are peculiar to their own History And this is all that can be expected from foreign Testimony for if such Writers had been exact in the Records of our Saviour's Actions they had then been Christians and not Jews or Heathens Supposing them therefore as they were no Friends to Christianity they have given in all that suffrage to it that can be reasonably demanded from them And now as for the proof hereof it had been much more easie than it is had it not been for the pride and vanity of some of our modern Criticks who care very little what becomes of the truth or falshood of things so they can shew their censuring Faculty upon words and particularly they have in this case set themselves with their utmost critical Severity to disparage or destroy the most eminent Testimonies cited by the Ancients out of foreign Writers in behalf of Christianity Scaliger the Father of them all led the Dance upon what motive I cannot imagine unless it were out of Envy to the Fame and Glory of Eusebius against whom he particularly set himself and his endeavours but however the design looking like a Novelty and carrying in it an ostentation of Learning for that reason alone he could not want a great number of Followers among that sort of Men. But to what little purpose they have spent all their pains and peevishness I now come to represent And here first Josephus the Jew who was contemporary with the Apostles agrees all along with the Evangelists in the History of that time He gives the same account and description of John the Baptist as we reade in the Gospels He gives us the same narration of Herod the Tetrarch and particularly of his marrying his Brother's Wife He mentions the Tax of Cyrenius He records the Acts of the several Governours of Judaea Pontius Pilate Felix and Portius Festus and describes the succession of the several High priests Caiaphas Joha and Alexander the death of Herod Agrippa and of Saint James the Brother of our Lord nay he gives not onely a just History but an high Character of our Lord himself All which our learned Men are willing enough to pass as certain and warrantable History excepting onely that passage concerning our Saviour Onely there is one difficulty in the Tax of Cyrenius which Saint Luke says was about the time of our Saviour's Nativity but Josephus not till after the Banishment of Archelaus which hapned at least nine years after the Death of Herod so that which way to reconcile this difference learned Men have been much puzled and towards its solution have started variety of Conjectures And therefore though it is of no very great concernment I shall give some account of it before I proceed to the Testimony concerning Jesus § XII And first of all Baronius tells us plainly that Josephus is mistaken but then this is to cut the Knot not to untie it for our business is to reconcile him and the sacred History but if we utterly reject him instead of answering the Objection we grant it viz. that there are irreconcileable differences between him and the Evangelists Though here I cannot but wonder at the unusual disingenuity of Casaubon who whereas Baronius affirms that Josephus does in many things of Chronology contradict Saint Luke and therefore if we must stand to his Authority that will enforce us to reject the Evangelist he I say inveighs and declaims upon this as if it were Baronius his Assertion and not his Argument and rates him severely as if he had positively affirm'd that the Testimony of Josephus was sufficient to oblige us to quit that of the Evangelist Whereas he onely makes use of it as a forcible Objection against appealing to Josephus in any matters wherein he contradicts the Scriptures for in such cases says he we cannot admit him without rejecting them Now I say from hence to infer that Baronius affirm'd that we were obliged so to doe became not the ingenuity of a learned Man But the truth of it is to observe once for all Casaubon was little less partial towards one Extreme than Baronius towards the other For as it was the custom of that learned Cardinal and the Writers of the Church of Rome to rake together every thing that might serve their Cause embracing the forged and spurious as well as the true and undoubted records of Antiquity So Casaubon and the learned Men of his way have been as diligent to weaken the Authority of all the most ancient and most authentick Writers so that there is not the least slip in any of the Ancients that they have not observed in their critical Notes upon them and beside that they reject whole Books of the best and earliest Antiquity But by this means they have between them both done this great service to the Christian Church that as they have discover'd the fraud of supposititious Books so they have confirm'd the Authority of the true and genuine And it is by occasion of their disputes that we are come to a certain knowledge of all the sincere records of Antiquity So that at last the Epistles of Ignatius and the Apostolical Canons that have been most of all opposed have by those great endeavours that have been employed to destroy their Authority gain'd and will for ever keep as undoubted a credit as the most unquestion'd pieces of Justin Martyr or Irenaeus The next guess is that of Beza which is followed and variously emproved by Scaliger Casaubon Grotius and others viz. That Cyrenius was employed by Augustus to take two several Musters of the People one with a Tax and the other without it and that was it that was made at the time of our Saviour's Birth For Augustus designing that compendious Account of the Roman Empire which Historians so often speak of and which he left as a guide and direction to his Successours in the Empire sent several Officers through the several Provinces to take an exact account of the number and condition of the Inhabitants and for this purpose though Quintilius Varus were then Prefect of Syria Cyrenius was join'd in Commission with him as a Person that was by reason of his residence in Syria and his Wars in Cilicia exactly acquainted with the Affairs of the East as afterwards he was sent with C. Caesar on the same Errand and when Judaea was reduced into the form of a Province after the Banishment of Archelaus and the first Tax to be imposed immediately by the Romans upon the People he was particularly singled out as the Person most able to manage it So that it is not unlikely that he might be employed in this business though not himself but Quintilius Varus was then Prefect of Syria And if this be so then
up both in the Records of that City and the Syrian Tongue to which Language the ancient Greek and Latin Fathers were altogether strangers and if they had not yet they might easily be ignorant of so remote a Register But that there were such Records we have all the Faith of Eusebius at stake who positively vouches it that he found them enrolled in the publick Registry of Edessa and faithfully translated them out of the Syrian into the Greek Tongue Not to mention Saint Ephraem who lived before the time of Saint Austin and was a Deacon in the City of Edessa who makes the same honourable mention of these Epistles with Eusebius though that is a pregnant Testimony by it self but much more so from its exact agreement with Eusebius his Relation but passing by that and much Aug. Ep. 263. more the Epistle of Darius to Saint Austin and of Theodorus Studita to Pope Paschal because it is possible they might rely wholly upon the Authority of Eusebius I shall lay the whole stress of the Testimony upon him alone whom we cannot suppose guilty of such a gross and meer forgery as to have framed the whole story onely out of his own Brain I will grant that he may sometimes seem partial and favourable to his own cause and be apt to make more of a Testimony than the Testimony it self will bear but that he should forge and falsie a publick Record and that in a matter of this weighty nature he has given us no reason to entertain so hard and unkind a suspicion of him For he is a stranger to Eusebius that knows him not to be as nice and curious in examining the credit of his Authorities as any the most critical Authours whatsoever and for this reason he has rejected many excellent passages that might have been very serviceable to his Cause meerly because of their doubtfull Antiquity allowing nothing as Authentick that he cannot vouch by the Testimony of ancient and contemporary Writers Now that such a Man should be guilty of such a gross and groundless Lye as this is past the ill-nature of Mankind to suspect Nay farther though some of our late Masters of Censure are very forward to observe the slips and mistakes of this great Man and charge them smartly upon him as if done out of meer design yet the whole matter being impartially weighed we have more reason to impute them to haste and inadvertency For though sometimes he may seem to emprove Testimonies yet does he as often lessen them which plainly shews that he trusted too much to his memory But still he is ever in the right as to the main of the Story and fails onely in circumstances and that chiefly of Chronology by confounding sometimes one Story with another but otherwise he tells no false Stories and onely makes some mistakes of memory upon true ones and as many of them to the disadvantage as to the advantage of his Cause as might be shewn if it were worth the while by comparing all particulars But for the present this is sufficiently exemplified in the very last passage that we insisted upon viz. The Testimony of Pilate concerning our Saviour in which the chief thing as it is set down by Tertullian is our Saviour's Miracles and yet it is left out by Eusebius when he transcribes the rest of the Testimony And though it is possible that he might follow the Greek Translatour of Tertullian yet however we see he is as easily drawn into a lessening as a magnifying mistake and it is much more likely that Eusebius should through haste clip the Translation than that the Translatour should clip the Original for he onely consulted the passage occasionally and so might in his hasty transcribing overlook a part of it but for the other who made that Translation his particular business it was not easie to overlook so material a passage In short Whatsoever faults Eusebius may be guilty of no Man can suspect him of meer Forgery without the forfeiture of his Ingenuity Neither in the last place is the date of the Record an inconsiderable circumstance to prove the Record it self for Eusebius tells us that at the bottom of it was subscribed These things were done the 340 th year Which though it has heretofore puzled learned Men is excellently clear'd by the Epocha of the Edessean Computation who began their Account from the first year of the 117 th Olympiad when Seleucus began his Reign in Asia now from that to the 202 d. Olympiad in which year being the 15 th of Tiberius our Saviour suffer'd is just 340. years So that Thaddaeus was dispatched to Edessa in the very same year in which our Saviour arose from the dead that great work it seems being once over he would no longer delay the good King's request These are all the foreign Testimonies that I think convenient to represent in this place though many more I shall be forced to observe when I come to give an account how it comes to pass that though our Saviour did those Miracles that are recorded of him and though there were all that evidence given of them that we pretend there was yet so great a part of the Men of that Age both Jews and Gentiles should live and dye in Infidelity § XVII Having hitherto demonstrated the impossibility of the falshood of the Apostles Testimony concerning the truth of Christianity from its contradiction to the first Instincts of humane Nature to all the principles of common Prudence and to their own design it self and from the undoubted certainty of their Records and from the concurrent Testimony of foreign Writers I now proceed to the next part of the Argument that supposing the Apostles Evangelists and first Disciples of Christ would have endeavour'd to impose upon the World with a palpable and unprofitable Lye against all the foremention'd contradictions to Nature to Sense and to Themselves to demonstrate the impossibility that they could ever have prevailed so effectually and so speedily as they did upon the Faith of Mankind And as many thousand Absurdities as there were in the former Supposition there are so many ten thousands in this for the inequality of the number of the Persons was not less the first Preachers of the Gospel being very sew in comparison of the vast multitudes of their first Converts And yet if Christianity were false all these must be guilty not onely of all that folly that we have represented in the case of the Apostles but much more in that they did not onely suffer themselves wilfully to be deceived into the belief of the strange Story of Jesus without sufficient evidence of its truth for if it had sufficient evidence then it was no Imposture if it had not then all that profest their belief of it were wilfully deceived i. e. They pretended to believe that to be a Divine Revelation though themselves knew that they had no sufficient ground or motive for so strange a belief
so near and yet so prodigious And when they had as it was an easie matter assured themselves of its truth and reality this could not but provoke them to an eager enquiry after the meaning of so strange a thing And when they were assured that the Miracle was wrought by the Followers of that Jesus who was lately crucified and that they declared themselves Eye witnesses of his Resurrection from the dead and withall professed that they were endued with this power of Miracles from Heaven onely for an undoubted evidence and confirmation of the truth of their Testimony they had not power to withstand the force of such a mighty and astonishing demonstration And it was this demonstration of the Spirit and of Power as Saint Paul styles it rather than the strength of their Arguments as cogent as they were that first baffled the unbelieving World into Christianity and forced in the assents of Men to the truth and Divine Authority of its Doctrine They did not put their Auditours to the trouble of examining the validity of their Testimony but prevented all enquiries by this infallible confirmation The evidence of their Miracles was such an irrefragable Argument of the truth of their Testimony as surmounted the power of all other demonstration And what rational Man would stay to expect any other proof of a Divine Testimony that has seen it unquestionably attested by a Divine Power Or who could doubt and dispute after he had seen Devils dispossest the Sick healed and the dead raised This was such an almighty attestation to their preaching that it upbraided away their Scruples and bore away their Understandings And by this means it was that the Gospel prevail'd so easily and so speedily over all the World Its first preachers converted whole Cities and Nations in a moment and founded new Churches upon one undeniable Miracle and nothing less considering all circumstances of things and all the disadvantages under which it laboured could so soon have propagated the Gospel over all the World And thus if we trace the Apostolical History we scarce find any thing transacted without a Miracle insomuch that the People at length familiarly resorted to them for the cure of all kind of Diseases Acts 5. 12. And this power was so vulgarly known at that time that Saint Paul insists upon it as the proof of his true Apostleship Rom. 15. 18 18. 2 Cor. 12. 12. which had been too absurd a thing to alledge to his Followers in confutation of his Enemies if it had been a meer Fiction for if it were they knew it to be so when he appeals to the Signs and Wonders he had already wrought among them and if he had wrought none they could not but convict him of falshood But though I have already proved the certainty of the Records of the New Testament and so might from thence rationally enough make out the truth of these Apostolical Miracles and though I have in part proved the sufficiency of the Tradition of the Church to attest both them and all things contained in them and shall anon more distinctly shew the undoubted and uninterrupted conveyance of it from the very Apostles themselves so that if they had not been true they could never have gain'd belief yet in this present Argument I will not build upon these or any other suppositions and indeed if I suppose them this Argument would be needless for once granting the Scriptures to be true and authentick Records of the Apostles actions to what purpose is it to go about to prove that they were endued with a power of Miracles when the Record alone is an undoubted proof of it And therefore I onely argue from the nature of the thing it self viz. That it is impossible the Christian Faith lying under all those disadvantages above represented could ever have been propagated with that speed and facility that it was all the World over any other way than by this power of working Miracles and on the contrary that supposing this evidence that they gave the World by their Miracles that then it was natural and almost necessary that they should meet with the success they did Here then lies the force of my present Argument that when it was impossible they should compass their design any other way and when it was natural if they took this course to succeed in it and when it is certain that they had such wonderfull success that is a manifest Argument that they were endued with such a power of Miracles as is reported of them And therefore I did not produce those Testimonies of Scripture but now alledged as proofs to justifie the truth of the Argument but onely as instances to exemplifie the practice of it v. g. how incredible it is that 3000 People when they heard the Apostles affirm at Whitsontide that the same Jesus whom they had seen so shamefully executed at Easter was risen from the Grave and ascended into Heaven should so immediately believe them upon their bare Report but when they beheld that miraculous effect of the Holy Ghost in them whereby such illiterate Persons were enabled to speak all manner of Languages that alone could not but satisfie them of the truth of their Testimony So that I argue not from the truth of the Record but from the nature of the thing it self which could not have been done any other way than as it is recorded to have been done I might here also confirm the truth of their Miracles by the confession of their greatest Enemies in that I do not find that ever any of them denied them to have been done but instead of that ascribe them to the power of Magick though how foolish that evasion is I shall shew when I come to consider their evasions to this Argument at present this very surmise is a plain confession of the reality of the thing it self and that goes a great way as to evidence when coming out of the mouth of an Adversary but this having suggested I shall not farther insist upon it § XXIV Onely there is one thing remaining that adds great force to the strength of this Argument viz. That this power was not meerly confined to the Apostolical Age but was continued down to the next Ages of the Church which if true it is an undeniable Evidence of the truth of the Apostolical Miracles in particular and of the Divinity of the Christian Religion in general And yet of the truth of these we have no one thing for which we have better Records It is unanimously attested by all Writers of those times and that in such a publick and extraordinary way as raises their Testimony up to certain demonstration for they do not barely report it but they upbraid it to all their Adversaries as a thing undeniable they challenge Emperours Proconsuls the whole Senate in their Apologies and publick Writings to convince them by experiment they urge it in their Disputes with learned Men and dare them to contradict it
diligence of Eusebius So that though Scaliger have proved the Letter now extant at the end of Justin Martyr to be spurious as is too evident from its unskilfull inscription yet that there were such Letters then written is as evident from this Appeal of Tertullian to the Senate it self not long after the thing was done However as for the substance of the Story that was so well known as to be painted upon Tables some whereof Themistius says he saw in his time the Emperour himself being drawn with his Hands and Eyes lift up and the Souldiers receiving the Rain in their Head-pieces Neither is it less vouched by Heathen than by Christian Writers as Dion Julius Capitolinus Claudian Lampridius who attribute it partly to the Emperour 's own prayers to Jupiter but chiefly to the enchantments of Chaldean or Jewish Magicians i. e. Christians who by the Heathens were looked upon as no other than Jews and were at that time generally esteemed Magicians for those strange things that were reported to be done by them So that these very Writers have unwittingly cast the honour of this Miracle upon the Christians alone in that onely they at least no other Jews were at that time famous for Magick by which these Writers suppose it to have been effected However the matter of Fact being put past question by so unanimous an attestation of it I leave it to the judgment of any Man of common sense whether it were done by Magick or by Miracle But with as much assurance as Tertullian insists upon the Miracles of Christians Origen if it be possible out-does him sending numberless challenges upon this point Here he begins both his dispute and his triumph over Celsus We have such a proof of the Divinity of our Discipline as your Greekish way of demonstration cannot afford that which the Apostle calls the demonstration of Spirit and Power i. e. Prophesies and Miracles and of the truth of the latter beside many other Proofs we have this assured evidence that we see Instances of it even at this day And when Celsus sets it at the front of his Calumnies that the Christians cast out Devils by Diabolical Inchantments and Invocations Origen insults over the Calumny because says he whatever they doe all the World knows it is done by invocating Christ's not the Devil's name Though beside that this is a plain confession from an Epicurean who really believed there was no such thing as a Devil that the Christians did something so extraordinary that no probable account could be given of them unless they were done by some power more than humane And so again Origen having asserted the certainty of the Apostolical Miracles both from the wonderfull success of their Doctrine and the undoubted Records of them he farther proves it by those many Instances and Examples of it that were to be seen at that time of many whereof himself had been an Eye-witness and though Celsus and other such Sceptical and Atheistical Persons that are beforehand resolved to believe nothing of this kind may make themselves merry with it yet God bears Witness with my own Conscience that I do not endeavour by any falshoods but by various miraculous Examples to recommend the Divine Religion of Jesus So that here he does not barely vouch the truth of his Assertion but burthens his Conscience with it which is no less than attesting it upon Oath And in another place when Celsus seoffingly asks what wonderfull things our Saviour did at his Passion Origen answers that he could tell him of a great many both out of the Christian and Heathen Records but yet quitting them all it is more than enough for the satisfaction of all that are ingenuous that at this day Diseases are cured onely by virtue of his name And again that himself had seen many who by having the name of God and Christ call'd over them had been deliver'd from the greatest Evils Frenzy and Madness and infinite other Distempers which neither Men nor Devils had been able to cure And speaking elsewhere of the Christians power over Devils this says he is familiarly put in practice by the vulgar sort of Christians the grace of Christ thereby discovering the contemptibleness and infirmity of the Devils when there was no need as your Philosophers dream of learning or any thing extaordinary in order to their Ejection I might add divers other passages out of his Writings but these are enough if not too many After him follows Minatius Felix a famous Advocate at Rome who with the same assurance appeals to the very Senses of his Adversaries Every Man knows says he and you your selves that the Devils whenever they are tortur'd and vexed out of the Bodies that they possess by the Prayers of Christians are forced to confess themselves to be but Devils even Saturn Serapis and Jupiter and whatsoever other Demon you worship are forced to confess what they are and you may be sure that they would not belie themselves especially in your presence and therefore we onely desire you to take their own Testimony and their own confession For when they are adjured by the name of the onely true God it puts them into tremblings and convulsion fits and forces them to quit their possession And in the same manner does Saint Cyprian challenge Demetrian a stubborn and a prejudiced Enemy to come and see the Demons whom he worshipt how they were as it were whipt by Christians out of the Bodies that they possessed when weeping and howling they confess that the time of their Judgment is come come you and satisfie your self that what I affirm is true But there is no end of these challenges in the primitive Writers of the Christian Church and I am tired with so often tranfcribing the same thing and therefore if any Man desire it he may reade it repeated in Eusebius contra Hieroclem c. 1. in Lactantius de Justitiâ l. 2. c. 15. l. 4. c. 27. l. 5. c. 21 22. in Firmicus de Errore profanae Religionis in Prudentius Apotheof in Theodoret de curand Graec. affect Serm. 3. And now after all it is no doubt very credible that such a number of learned and sober Men that lived in such remote and distant places should be such impudent Sots and Fools as to publish the truth of such things upon their own certain knowledge to appeal to the Senses of their greatest Adversaries to challenge them to convince them by trial and experiment and to devolve the issue of the whole cause upon the event and that with the pawn of their Lives in the face of the Sun in their publick disputes with Philosophers and Apologies to Emperours and Proconsuls 't is likely I say that they should doe all this had it all been a manifest and palpable Fiction § XXV This is that mighty demonstration of power to which the primitive Christians constantly appeal'd with the greatest assurance of Mind to the very face of their
of him upon his knees to make him Emperour to whom Apollonius with the state and authority of a God answered I have made thee so viz. by my Interest with the Gods and he so far gratified the vanity of the Man as to seem to receive the Empire at his hands and thus was he assured of his Empire by Men of greatest Reputation for both Religions for as there was no Jew at that time to be compared to Josephus for knowledge and learning in the Antiquities of his own Nation so Apollonius was then the most famous and renowned Saint in the World for the Heathen Religion now whilst he stayed at Alexandria a Blind and a Lame Man being warn'd so to doe by the God Serapis address themselves to him for a Cure and obtain it so that considering the circumstances of the story by it self it looks so like fraud and flattery as to betray it self For the report of his having been abused into the conceit of being the Messias in Judaea being probably come to Alexandria where great numbers of Jews resided it is likely that they would not come short of their Country-men in doing honour to the Emperour and so put these two counterfeits upon the design and there are enough of such dissembling Cripples to be had in great Cities for it being foretold that the Messias when he came should among other Miracles cure the Lame and the Blind they thought it an acceptable piece of flattery thus to way-lay his Ambition or rather this design was set on foot by the Egyptians a fawning crafty and flattering sort of People but chiefly by Apollonius for the honour of that Religion for which he was so zealous and therefore by this artifice confirm'd his own predicton of the Empire by the Authority of his Gods for they were sent on their Errand by Serapis But whoever contrived it and however it pleased the Emperour's humour it at first surprised him so as to move his laughter and scorn and to refuse the attempt with a very great deal either of seeming or real Reluctancy though at last he suffer'd himself to be overcome by the great importunity of the by-standers and the assurance of the Physicians that the thing was possible and then perform'd it in publick with all imaginable pomp and solemnity either as if himself had been beforehand privy to the plot or had now smelt out the design of the Complement Now what wise Man could compare this one theatrical piece of Court-flattery with all the Miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles the meer suspicion of these pretended Cripples being counterfeits at least the absolute uncertainty of it destroys its credit whereas the impossibility of suspecting any fraud or flattery in our Saviour's Miracles is an undoubted demonstration of their reality Beside that the Emperour was assured by the Physicians that the Men were not past a natural Cure and so not to be compared with our Saviour's Miracles most whereof were done upon Persons naturally incurable But to wave this I cannot give so much credit to a story that smells so rankly of imposture as to suppose the possibility of its truth and therefore I shall onely desire the Reader to compare it as he finds it under so many disadvantages of suspicion with the credibility of all those motives of belief that we have produced for the History of our Saviour's Life Death and Resurrection and then leave it to his own ingenuity to judge whether it be reasonable to oppose one story so miserably suspicious to a thousand others guarded with all the advantages of proof against all possible cavils and exceptions § XXVII But the Man of Wonders is Apollonius Tyanaeus of whom they boast and insult as the true Heathen Messias in that he wrought not as Vespasian did one or two chance Miracles but his whole Life was all prodigy and equal to our Saviour's both for the number and the wonder of his Works But here first we have in part already shewn what undoubted Records we have of the Life of Jesus whereas all the credit of Apollonius his History depends upon the Authority of one single Man who beside that he lived an hundred years after him ventured nothing as the Apostles did in confirmation of its truth but onely composed it in his Study thereby as appears from his frequent digressions to take occasion of communicating all the learning he had raked together to the World Nay so far was he from incurring any loss by the Work that he was set upon it by a great Empress whose religious Zeal in the Cause would be sure to see him well rewarded And though he made use of the Commentaries of Damis the inseparable Companion of Apollonius yet he confesses that Damis himself never publisht his own Commentaries but that a Friend of Damis communicated them to the Empress which himself might probably have forged as is common in Courts to pick her pocket However as for Damis himself it is evident from Philostratus his whole Story that he was a very simple Man and that Apollonius onely pickt him up as a fit Sancho Panche to exercise his Wit upon so that upon all occasions we find him not onely baffling the Esquire in Disputes but breaking Jests upon him which he always takes with much thankfulness and more humility still admiring his Master's Wisedom but much more his Wit But after all what the Story of Damis was or whether there were ever any such Story we have no account unless from Philostratus himself and therefore we must resolve it all into his Authority alone And there it is evident that he was neither a God nor a Divine Man as his Friends boasted nor a Magician or Conjurer as his Enemies imagin'd but a meer fanatick and pedantick Pythagorean that for the honour of his Sect travel'd as many others have done into all parts of the World and when he return'd home told his Country-men that all Men renown'd for Wisedom all the World over were of the Sect of the Pythagoreans and then for the advancement of their Authority told strange and prodigious tales of their wonder-working Power Though here either he or his Historian has acquitted himself so awkardly as utterly to spoil the tale and defeat the design This Eusebius has shewn at large in his Book against Hierocles by taking apieces all parts of the Story and discovering all its flaws and incoherences but I shall content my self with proving the vanity of the whole from the notorious falshood of one particular Narration upon which depends all that extraordinary power that he pretends to and that is his conversation with the Indian Brachmans from whom if we may believe his account of himself he learnt all that he could doe more than the common Philosophers of Greece And if this prove a Romance all the rest of the History must unavoidably follow its fortune and for this little proof will serve the turn when most of the Stories are so
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
However it is evident from hence that the Apostles settled a perpetual form of Church government to which all Christian people were indispensably bound to conform and then if that form were Episcopacy and if they settled that by our Saviour's own advice with an Eye to prevent Schisms and Contentions the case is plain that Ignatius his pressing all Churches so earnestly to obedience to their Bishop was nothing else but a prosecution both of our Saviour's and their command And then that it was Episcopacy is so evident from the unanimous and unquestionable Testimony of all Antiquity that it is positively asserted by all the Ancients and not opposed by any one but that would be too great a digression from the present Argument and therefore I shall not pursue it though I have gone thus far out of my way to shew for what reasons some Men have endeavour'd to impair the credit of the Records of the ancient Church not for any real defect and uncertainty that they found in them but because they give in such clear and undeniable Witness against their fond and unwarrantable Innovations And therefore I would advise these Gentlemen as they value the peace either of the Church or their own Consciences that they would cease to struggle any longer against their own convictions renounce their Errour when they can neither defend nor deny it and not be so headstrong as rather than part with a wrong Notion or confess a Mistake endeavour what in them lies to blow up the very foundations of the Christian Faith Or to bespeak them in the Words of Saint Clement Is there any one then that is bravely spirited among you Is there any one that hath compassion Doth any one abound in Charity Let him say if this Sedition or Contention or Schism be for me or by my means I will depart I will go my way whither soever you please I will do what the Society commands onely let the Sheepfold of Christ enjoy peace with the Elders that are placed over it He that shall doe so shall purchase to himself great glory in the Lord. Thus they doe and thus they will doe who leade their lives according to the rules of God's policy This was the gentle and peaceable temper of the primitive Christians but if they thought it their duty to quit their Country rather than occasion the disturbance of the Churches peace how much more to forgoe a false or an ungrounded Opinion And therefore to deal plainly with them I shall load their Consciences with this one sad and serious truth that when Men have once rashly departed from the Church that they live under and persevere in their Schism in spite of the most evident conviction they have renounced together with the Church their Christian Faith and are acted meerly by the spirit of Pride i. e. the Devil And therefore I do with all compassion to their Souls request such Men among us impartially to reflect upon themselves and their actions and if they are convicted in their own Consciences of having made causless Schisms in the Christian Church as I know they must be by those peevish pitifull pretences that they would seem to plead in their own excuse with all possible speed to beg pardon of God and his Church and as they would avoid the Judgment and displeasure of Almighty God against Pride Envy Peevishness Contention and Sedition to make publick confession of their fault to all the People that they have drawn after them into the same sin and with all humility and lowliness beg to be admitted into the bosom and communion of this truly ancient and Apostolick Church But my tender Charity to these poor Men that I see driving with so much fury self-conceit and confidence to utter destruction has again drawn me out of my way to perswade them if it be possible to turn back into the way of peace and salvation however it is high time for me to return to my Discourse § XXXI After this great and glorious Martyr the next eminent Witness of the original Tradition of the Christian Faith is his dear Friend and fellow Disciple Saint Policarp who as he was educated together with him under the Discipline of Saint John so he out-lived his Martyrdom about sixty years and by reason of his very great Age was able to give his Testimony not onely to that but to the next period of time so that as he conversed with Saint John Irenaeus conversed with him and withall gives an account of his Journey to Rome in the time of Anicetus and of his Martyrdom under M. Aurelius which was not till the year 167. So that through the great Age of Saint John and Saint Policarp the Tradition of the Christian Church was by them alone delivered down to the third Century for Irenaeus lived into the beginning of it not suffering Martyrdom himself by the earliest account till the year 202. And this is the peculiar advantage of his Testimony beyond all others that as it was as early as any so it continued into the most known times of the Christian Church for it was under the reign of M. Aurelius that the greatest part of the Christian Apologists flourisht and beside that his great courage and constancy in suffering for the Faith proves the great and undoubted certainty of his Tradition He was familiarly conversant with the Apostles and Eye witnesses of our Lord and therefore Ignatius recommended to him the care of his Church as knowing him to be a truly Apostolical Man and so he continued his care of the Christian Church for many years with great Faith and Resolution and at last seal'd his Faith with his Bloud I shall not need to give a particular account of his Life it is enough that as he declared at his Trial he had faithfully served his Lord and Master fourscore and six years but among the Records of his Life there is none more certain or more remarkable than his own Epistle to the Church of Philippi and the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna concerning his Martyrdom in both which is shewed his great assurance of Immortality In the first he bottoms his Exhortation to an holy Life upon no other principle than the certain evidence of their Saviour's Resurrection and firm belief of their own in the second he cheerfully resigns up his last breath with the greatest assurance of Mind concerning it in this short and excellent Prayer O Lord God Almighty the Father of thy well-beloved and ever-blessed Son Jesus Christ by whom we have received the knowledge of Thee the God of Angels Powers and of every Creature and of the whole race of the Righteous who live before Thee I bless Thee that Thou hast graciously condescended to bring me to this day and hour that I may receive a portion in the number of thy holy Martyrs and drink of Christ's Cup for the Resurrection to eternal Life both of Soul and Body in the incorruptibleness of the Holy Spirit
Into which number grant I may be received this day being found in thy sight as a fair and acceptable Sacrifice such an one as Thou thy self hast prepared that so Thou mayest accomplish what Thou O true and faithfull God hast foreshewn Wherefore I praise Thee for all thy Mercies I bless Thee I glorifie Thee through the eternal high Priest thy beloved Son Jesus Christ with whom to thy self and the Holy Ghost be glory both now and for ever Amen To this eminent Martyrdom of Saint Policarp and the Asiaticks I cannot but subjoin that of Pothinus Bishop of Lyons and his Companions in that they suffer'd under the same Prince with the same Christian Courage and Resolution especially because Pothinus also was of a very great Age and almost as near the Apostolical times as Policarp and probably sent by him into these Western parts and lastly because it is attested by publick and undoubted Epistles sent from the Church of Lyons by Irenaeus to the Bishop of Rome and the Churches of Asia of both which Epistles Scaliger himself has given this just and deserved Encomium that as they are of the most ancient Martyrdoms in the Church so the reading of them cannot but so affect every pious and devout Mind as never to be satiated with it and as for my own part says he I do protest that I never met with any thing in all the History of the Church by the reading whereof I have been so much transported as scarce to be my self and particularly of the Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons what can be read more brave or more venerable in all the Monuments of Christian Antiquity And the truth is it is a very amazing Story and one of the greatest examples both of the Modesty and the Courage of the primitive Christians for as they were treated with new and unheard of Cruelties so their behaviour under all their Torments was decent and free from all appearance either of Vanity or Passion Now what can be the meaning of these things that such Men as Policarp and Pothinus to whom I should have added Pionius that suffer'd gallantly about the same time who lived so near the time of our Saviour who had such opportunity to search into the truth of those things that were reported of him should thus frankly resign their Lives upon any less account than the full assurance of the truth of those things that they believed But though this be sufficient to make good the Evidence of the first and apostolical Tradition of the Church from the Testimony of these two eminent Martyrs yet before I quit it it will be convenient to clear off one Objection in which as the ancient Church in general so Policarp in particular is concern'd and that is the contradictory Tradition about the observation of Easter both Parties pretending to derive their different Customs from the Apostles Policarp and the Churches of the lesser Asia from Saint John the Church of Rome from Saint Peter Now if this be so why should it not destroy the credit of their Tradition when they make so little Conscience as to fasten contradictions upon the Apostles themselves Great use has of late been made of this Objection by all the Enemies of the primitive Church Mr. Hales in the time of his peevishness and before he was reconciled to the Church of England has with great scorn upbraided its grossness and folly And it is one of Daille's Topicks against the use and authority of the Fathers and how often it has been since objected by others it is needless here to repeat And yet when all is done it proves nothing but that some Men have a very great Itch to be finding fault for otherwise this grossness and folly this phantastick hurry in which all the World were Schismaticks as Mr. Hales is pleased to speak of it with a great many other good words is a very remarkable instance both of the faithfulness the wisedom and the temper of the primitive Christians For that the custom of the Eastern and Western Church in this thing was different from the beginning is evident from their different practice and so must have descended from the Apostles themselves who might in this as well as other things casually and without design prescribe different Usages Saint John in those parts of Asia where he resided continuing Easter after the manner of the Jewish Passover Saint Peter and Saint Paul in other places to prevent too much Judaising in its observation making the same little alteration in its time as was made in the Sabbath and in this matter of complying with or changing Jewish Customs the Apostles varied their Orders according to circumstances of time and place sometime coming up closer to them sometime keeping at a greater distance according to the judgment of their own discretion Now these different Customs about Easter being once casually settled in the Church in process of time they began to be matter of contention among the People as we know the common People are always zealous for their own Customs whatever they are And therefore to stifle this fire that was broke out among them Policarp a Man of the greatest Authority in Asia undertakes a Journey to Rome if possible to allay and compose the Controversie where upon debate between him and Anicetus they conclude it the most proper course that could be taken for the peace of the Church that both Parties should retain their own Customs without any breach of Charity or Communion and to declare this to the World they communicate together at the holy Sacrament Policarp consecrating the Eucharist in the Church of Anicetus and so they parted lovingly and continued ever after good Friends This is all the grossness and folly that I know of that these good Men were guilty of in their management of this Controversie Though it seems it was afterward revived by the indiscretion of one Man Victor Bishop of Rome who would needs take upon him to command the Asiaticks to conform to the practice of his and all other Churches under the penalty of Excommunication To this they return him a sober Answer represent the inconvenience of changing so ancient a Custom disclaim his Power and Jurisdiction over them and advise him rather to consult the Peace and Unity of the Catholick Church than to impose upon them particular Customs contrary to the practice of their Ancestours Neither was this done by them alone but by almost all the Bishops of the Christian World though they were of his own way unanimously condemning his heat and rashness in so trivial a thing and among the rest Irenaeus having convened a Synod in France writes him a Synodical Epistle to this purpose That he agreed with him in his Observation of Easter but not in the Necessity of it that it was a very unadvised thing to think of excommunicating whole Churches for observing the ancient Customs derived down to them from their Ancestours that there was as
little agreement among themselves concerning the manner of the preparatory Fast before Easter and yet this variety being of long standing among them no Man thought himself obliged to impose his own particular conceit upon others in such an indifferent thing and last of all minds him of the prudence and moderation of his Predecessours especially Policarp and Anicetus who did not so much as go about to perswade one another to change the ancient custom of their Church And the effect of these Epistles from all places especially of this of Irenaeus probably was this that they diverted Victor from pursuing his design For we do not find that he ever actually excommunicated the Asian Churches but onely that he threatned it But whether he did or did not it is a worthy piece of ingenuity to charge the folly of one furious and intemperate Man upon the whole Church and that in spite of their own protestation against it And yet this is all the grossness and folly wherewith our Innovatours have made so much noise against them And thus having removed this poor Objection which I could not avoid because it has of late appear'd among us with so much huff and confidence I proceed to the remaining Witnesses of our primitive Tradition And here I cannot pass by Papias for though he were a Person of no great Learning or Judgment yet he was a Man of clear Honesty and Simplicity and living near the time of the Apostles themselves did not search after their Story in Books but made it his particular business to enquire of their familiar acquaintance after their Sayings and Customs If any came in my way says he that was a follower of the Apostles forthwith I enquired of him after the Sayings of the Ancients what Andrew what Peter what Philip what Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lords Disciples what Ariston and John the Elder distinguisht from John the Evangelist and out of the Catalogue of the Apostles Disciples of the Lord were wont to say for I did not think I could profit my self more by reading their Books than by the more lively report of those Persons who are still alive and heard their discourses This is a peculiar sort of Testimony given in to a matter of Fact by a Man plain and simple and yet curious and inquisitive who inform'd himself of the truth of the things so lately transacted not onely by reading the Narratives that were written of them but from the more lively information of such who received it from Eye-witnesses I will easily grant that he was as Eusebius describes him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Person of a small Judgment and by consequence of little Authority as to his Opinion especially of the Millennium of which yet himself was not the first Authour but was betrayed into it by the Tradition of the Jews who generally believed that their Messias should reign a thousand years upon Earth in all manner of greatness and glory and therefore it was no wonder if those who were converted from Judaism to Christianity brought this Opinion along with them onely understanding the Jews more gross and carnal Notion in a more refined and spiritual sense and this was the dispute in those early days against the Jewish Hereticks particularly Cerinthus who believed of our Saviour as they had of the Messias that they expected that he should come once more upon Earth and reign at Jerusalem in all manner of pomp and grandeur but be that as it will Papias was ever thought of as a Man of a downright and untainted Integrity and had both the advantage of conversing with those that conversed with the Apostles and the curiosity of recording all the Traditions which they delivered to him by word of mouth and lastly was satisfied in that way of information of the truth of all those things that were registred concerning Jesus and his Apostles To him ought to be ranked Quadratus who wrote an Apologetick to the Emperour Adrian in which he positively avers that many of the Persons cured by our Lord of their Diseases were alive in his time and Aristides a Christian Philosopher at Athens who at the same time presented a learned and eloquent Apology to the same Emperour in behalf of the same cause § XXXII This is the first file of Witnesses next and immediately after the Apostles though I might have reckoned the following rank into the same Catalogue because they are twisted with them as they are with one another for as these that I have already mentioned are not all precisely of the same Age yet being of Antiquity enough to be competent Witnesses of the Tradition of the Apostles may be join'd together into one complicated Testimony of it so their next Successours followed them by the same degrees as they followed one another for Succession is not conveyed down like a Chain by certain Links but like a Cord by the same continued interweaving every part being some part of the part above it And though the Ages of the Church are distinguisht by Centuries yet the Lives of Men are not and the beginning of the next series lived with some of the former as they lived with the first that lived with the Apostles so that there is no possibility of making an Interruption any where between the Chanel and the Fountain head whereever we find the Stream that alone will certainly lead us up to its own Original But this will appear more distinctly by the degrees of its Conveyance having therefore brought the Tradition down to the time of M. Aurelius that is a considerable time beyond that of Trajan to which time Scaliger and some others are pleased to complain of a defect of Records but with what reason we have in part already seen and shall now further discover by our following Witnesses who were not onely able to testifie of their own times but of the foregoing Ages Among whom Hegesippus deserves the first place not onely for his great antiquity but for his manner of writing as an Historian and so not concern'd meerly to give an account of the Affairs of his own Age but to make a diligent enquiry into the Records and Transactions of former times He wrote five Books of Ecclesiastical History which he styled Commentaries of the Acts of the Church wherein he has in a plain and familiar style given an account of the Tradition of the Church and the most remarkable passages in it from our Lord's Death till his own time which was about or rather before the Reign of M. Aurelius for he says he came to Rome and stayed there till the time of Anicetus now Anicetus according to the latest computation succeeded in that See at the beginning of the Reign of Aurelius but according to the earlier account under Antoninus Pius so that it is probable that he was at Rome before Policarp And this description he has given of his Voyage that coming to Rome he
to their Vow But one of the Priests a Recabite says Hegesippus interposed to save James from the fury of the People But this says Scaliger could not be for the Recabites were of the Tribe of Judah and so uncapable of the Priesthood As if the Original constitution of either had been exactly observed at that time especially of the Priesthood when it is so well known that ever since the time of Herod the Great those Offices even of the High-Priesthood it self were entirely disposed of by their Governours who at pleasure put them in and out as they did any other Officers of State But they placed him says Hegesippus on the Pinacle of the Temple whither great numbers of the People went up to cast him down which says Scaliger they could not do because it was as Josephus tells us so very thick set with pointed Irons as to keep the Birds from setling upon it And so it is probable the greatest and highest Battlement of all was but it is very far from being in the least probable that James should be placed there to Preach to the People when it was impossible to be heard from so great an height or that he should not be dasht apieces when he was cast thence instead of falling alive upon his Knees as the Historian reports And therefore this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies any covering or Battlement must have been some lower frame of building from which he might be most conveniently heard of the People Now as from these Objections says Scaliger we may learn what to think of this Hegesippus so say I from these Replies to them may we learn what to think of this Scaliger that upon such poor surmises as these will not stick to destroy and villifie the best and most Ancient Records of the Christian Church And now the credit of this Ancient Author being fully Vindicated it does not only make good his own Testimony but of all others that were Recorded in his History between our Saviour's time and his own and to mention no more his account of the Bishops of Jerusalem goes a great way For next to James the Just he informs us that Simeon the Son of Cleophas and Cousen German to our Lord succeeded in the Bishoprick and sat there till the Reign of Trajan under whom he suffered Martyrdom only for the old jealousie of Vespasian and Domitian of being of the Line of David and so a Rival to the Empire So that here the Tradition of the Church was conveyed down to that time by as short a Succession as we have already shewn it to have been in the Church of Corinth from St. Paul to Clement and from Clement to Dionysius and in the Asian Church from the Apostles by Policarp to Pothinus and Irenaeus § XXXIII Next to Hegesippus follows Justin Martyr though had not the other been an Historian he might as being somewhat his Senior have gone before him being converted to Christianity in the time of Adrian about the end of the First Century after our Saviour's Passion and within Eight years after addrest an excellent Apology to Antoninus Pius in behalf of the Christian Faith and afterwards a Second to M. Aurelius his Son and Successor He was a Person of Eminent Parts and Learning the most judicious Philosopher of his time that had Surveyed all the Tenets of the several Sects and studied all kinds of useful Learning for the settlement and satisfaction of his own mind and having passed through the Schools of the Stoicks the Peripateticks the Pythagoreans and the Platonists of which himself hath given a pleasant account in the beginning of his Dialogue with Trypho he was at last advised by an unknown Grave Old Man that met him in his retired Walks to consider the Christian Philosophy to which he had no sooner applyed himself but he found it the only certain and satisfactory Philosophy In short he was such a Proficient in all kinds of Learning that his own Writings make good Photius his Character of him that as he was admirably furnisht with all sorts of Reading and History so he was arrived to the Perfection both of the Christian and Heathen Philosophy and therefore immediately after his Conversion gave a Learned and Rational account of the Vanity of the Gentile Religion As afterwards in his Apologies and his other Writings he did of the certain truth and Divine Authority of the Christian Faith both from the undoubted Miracles that in his time were wrought for the demonstration of it and from the certain Proof of our Saviour's Resurrection and the uninterrupted conveyance of it down to his own time And the assurance of his Faith he frequently avows with the greatest freedom and courage of mind and at last Seal'd it with his Blood And though he foresaw and foretold it not from any Spirit of Prophesie that he pretended to in it but from the probable course and most natural event of things yet notwithstanding this he did not in the least slacken his Zeal for the Christian cause but went on with all assurance of mind in its defence till it brought him to the encounter of Death which he did not only meet with his Eyes open but with all Joy and Alacrity as being Arrived at the end of his hopes and the beginning of his happiness Next to Justin Martyr Irenaeus follows in order who lived much about or a little after the same time but of him I shall need to say the less because I have already shewn the certainty of the Tradition that he had of the things that he believed from Policarp and Pothinus and his acquaintance with other Apostolical men only some few Remarks remain to make up his perfect Character and make out his perfect knowledge and for this that excellent Epistle of his to Florinus deserves to be consider'd in the first place This Doctrine of thine O Florinus that I may frankly declare the truth savoureth not of the sincere Faith disagreeth from the Church and betrayeth such as listen to it into extream Impiety This Doctrine no not the Hereticks which were out of the Church durst ever Publish this Doctrine such as were Elders before us and Disciples of the Apostles never delivered unto thee I saw thee when I was yet a Youth with Policarp in the lesser Asia living Gorgeously in the Emperour's Palace and mightily buisying thy self to get into favour and credit with him For I remember better the things of old than latter affairs for the things we learn in our younger years sink deepest into our minds and grow together with us So that I particularly remember the very place where Policarp sate when he taught his going out and his coming in his course of life the figure and proportion of his Body the Sermons he made to the People the report he made of his Conversation with John and others which knew the Lord how he remembred their sayings and what he heard from their mouths concerning the Lord
thing and after that when Men reported that to have been done which they knew impossible to be done what followed but away with them for idle Cheats and Lyars And therefore without ever examining them they thrust them into Prison with all manner of scorn and indignation Acts 5. 17 18. Secondly as for the Pharisees who were of the greatest power and reputation with the People they were a strange sort of ignorant supercilious and conceited Fanaticks And there is no temper of Mind so fixed and stubborn as religious Pride and Self-conceitedness 't is of all Illusions the most delightfull to the minds of Men and when they are once throughly possest with it it barrs up their Understandings against all Arguments it takes away the use of their natural Faculties and to go about to convince them of their folly and hypocrisie is onely to provoke their rage and choler This was the state of the case between our Saviour and the Pharisees They pretended to the strictest Piety and valued themselves at a mighty rate beyond all other Men for the singularity and exactness of their devotion And yet this they placed not in any conformity to the Divine Laws but in the observation of some vain Customs and Traditions derived from their Forefathers Now this being so gross and so foolish an Imposture our Saviour set himself particularly to represent its vanity and took all occasions to convince them that they had utterly forsaken the Law of Moses for which they pretended so much reverence and that the Customs they were so fond of were no part of his Religion because no where injoin'd in his Law but meer arbitrary conceits of their own devising And this it was that raised their displeasure against him to so great an height of hatred and indignation that a Person who pretended to so great an Office and Authority as that of the Messias should represent them so contemptibly in his publick and constant discourses to the People And therefore instead of considering the nature and truth of his Doctrine they all along set themselves to trapan him in his Discourses and minded nothing else but to pursue their revenge against him and never rested till they had wrecked all their malice upon him as the mortal Enemy of their Sect. Now 't is no wonder that Persons of this complexion were so strangely blinded against all that evidence that our Saviour gave of his Divine Commission For none so blind as those that will not see and none so wilfull as those that are in love with themselves and no self-love so doting as that which is grounded upon a false conceit of Sanctity and Religion And yet notwithstanding this some of the more ingenuous among them as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were overcome by the Divinity of his Works and afterward even Gamaliel himself was startled at them For the advice he gave to let the Apostles alone seem'd to have proceeded meerly from the unsettledness of his own Mind that was not then throughly satisfied concerning the truth or falshood of their pretences And the truth is his advice took with the Sanhedrin not from the reason of the thing but the authority of the Man for otherwise it was but very foolish Counsel that if this Work be of Men it would of its own accord come to nought for by that principle they must give liberty to all the Impostors in the World to disturb as much as in them lies the publick peace and quiet of Mankind But when it was doubtfull as it then seem'd to him lest haply by punishing the Apostles they might be found to fight against God upon this supposition it was not onely wise but pious advice to stay for a little farther tryal of the Cause before they undertook its utter extirpation And it is not a little observable that though some of the Pharisees were shockt out of their Prejudices the Sadducees were all impregnable for we no where reade that any of them were ever converted to the Christian Faith and the reason is plain because their first Principle supposed its truth utterly impossible and then they would not so much as enquire after it or hear any thing concerning it But the Pharisees not lying under this invincible Prejudice were notwithstanding all their other great hindrances in some capacity of conviction So that though we find that notwithstanding they were at first the fiercest Enemies to our Saviour's Doctrine yet afterwards they were out-stript by the Sadducees in their zeal and fury against it For as in the Gospels the Pharisees are every where noted as his most implacable Enemies so in the Acts of the Apostles after our Saviour's Resurrection the Sadducees are remarked as their most bitter and vehement Prosecutors And now this I think may be a sufficient account of the Incredulity of the Jews notwithstanding our Saviour gave all that Evidence of his Authority that we pretend he did And it is obvious enough to any Man that understands humane Nature to apprehend how easie a thing it is for Men not onely byassed but pressed down by all these Prejudices to avoid or neglect the force of all the Arguments and Demonstrations in the World § XXXVII And thus having described the several unreasonable Prejudices that withheld so many of the Jewish Nation from embracing of the Christian Faith we proceed now in the last place to the grounds that the Heathens went upon in their Opposition to it And these were as much more absurd and unreasonable than those of the Jews as was their Religion For that the Jews had some appearance of pretence against our Saviour's alteration in Religion we have already shewn in that it was own'd by himself to have been establisht by Divine Authority But as for the War that the Heathen World raised against it they grounded it upon such false Principles as though Christianity it self had been false betray their own folly and absurdity Atheism and Contempt of God and all Religion was their master-objection against the Christians and the onely thing they set up and contended for in opposition to it was their own wretched Idolatry and Superstition both which are too great demonstrations of an invincible prejudice and inflexible partiality And they are both so very absurd that which is most so 't is very hard to determine For whatever the Christians were guilty of it is certain that they were at the greatest distance from Atheism of any party of Men in the World And as for the Religion of the Gentiles it was so grosly wicked and foolish that it was impossible for any wise Man to embrace it without affronting both God and his own Conscience This was the true state of the Controversie between them they never enter'd into the debate of the matter of Fact or so much as once enquired into the merits of the Cause but for this reason alone they reputed all Christians as vile and profligate Persons because they would not join