diseases and work such other Miracles as Christ and his Apostles did Had they by Enthusiasm been mistaken in the Doctrines which they taught certainly God would never have wrought such wonderfull Works by their hands as give testimony thereto 4. Several of the principal Articles of our Faith depend upon such matters of fact as allow no Room for Enthusiasm to take place in them as that of the Resurrection of our Saviour from the dead his Ascension into Heavem and the descent of the Holy Ghost in the gift of Tongues For in such things as these which Men see with their eyes and hear with their ears and feel with their hands as one of the Apostles did the very Wounds of our Saviour after his Resurrection no Enthusiasm can ever lead Men into a mistake For can it possibly be said that it was only by Enthusiasm that five hundred Men together saw Christ after he was risen again from the dead or that it was by Enthusiasm that his Apostles saw him ascend up into Heaven from Mount Olivet in the presence of them all at noon-day or that it was only by Enthusiasm that the same Apostles on the day of Pentecost received the gift of Tongues by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them so as to be able to converse with all the several Nations then at Jerusalem in their own Languages without ever having learned any thing of them To say that Men could any way be mistaken in such things as these will be to deny the certainty of sense and overthrow the foundations of all manner of knowledge whatever It must therefore be said as to these particulars as it must also of all the Miracles of our Saviour which give Testimony to the Doctrines which he taught That his Apostles who testified them unto the World and upon the credit of them built up that Religion which they delivered unto us did either see them really done as they relate or they did not see them If they did see them no Enthusiasm could ever make them be mistaken therein and if they did not they must be altogether as bad Impostors as Mahomet himself in testifying them unto us and what but as great Wickedness as his could ever induce them so to do SECT IV. IV. The next Mark of an Imposture is That it must unavoidably contain in it several palpable falsities whereby may be made appear the falsity of all the rest For whoever invents a Lye can never do it so cunningly and knowingly but still there will be some flaw or other left in it which will expose it to a discovery and no Man who frames an invention can ever secure it herefrom without two qualifications which no Man can have and they are 1st A thorough knowledge of all manner of Truths And 2dly Such an exact memory as can bring them all present to his Mind whenever there shall be an occasion For to make the Lye pass without contradiction he must make it put on a seeming agreement with all other Truths whatever And how can any one do this without knowing all Truths and having them also all ready and present in his mind to consider them in order thereto And since no Man is sufficient for this no Man is sufficient so to frame a Lye but he will always put something or other into it which will palpably prove it to be so For if there be but any one known Truth in the whole scheme of Nature with which it interferes this must make the discovery and there is no Man that forgeth an Imposture but makes himself liable this way to be convicted of it This is the method whereby we distinguish supposititious Authors from those which are genuine and fabulous Writers from true Historians For there is always something in such which disagrees from known Truths to make the discovery some flaw always left in spight of the utmost care and foresight of the Forgerer that betrays the cheat Thus Annius's Imposture of his Berosus Manetho and Megasthenes became detected and so also we know the Tuscan Antiquities of Inghiramius to be a cheat of the like nature And by the same rule is it that we receive Sallust Tacitus and Suetonius for true Historians and reject others as Writers of Fables and of no authority with us And if we examine the Alcoran of Mahomet by the same method nothing can be more plainly convicted of Falsity and Imposture than that must be by it For although in that Book he allows both the Old and the New Testament to be of divine authority yet in a multitude of instances he differs from both I mean not in matters of Law and Religion for here his design is to differ but in matters of fact and history which if once true must evermore be the same They have a fetch indeed to bring him off by saying that the Jews and the Christians corrupted those holy Books and therefore where he relates things otherwise than they do he doth there restore Truth and not vary from it But certainly this will not hold where by a very gross blunder he makes the Virgin Mary the Mother of our Saviour to be the same with Miriam the Sister of Moses For this would be to put the Gospel so close upon the heels of the Law as to allow no time for the taking place of this latter before it would have been totally abolished by the former But which most discovers his Imposture are the monstrous Mistakes which he makes in the Moral part thereof For he allows Fornication and justifies Adultery by his Law and makes War Rapine and Slaughter to be the main part of the Religion which he taught which being contrary to the Nature of God from whom he says he received it and contrary to that Law of unalterable and eternal Truth which he hath written in the hearts of all of us from the beginning the obvious Principles of every Man's reason convict him of falsehood herein and thereby manifestly prove all the rest to be nothing else but an abominable Impiety of his own invention And were the Religion of Jesus Christ as delivered to us in the New Testament an Imposture like this it must have the same flaws therein that is many falsities in matter of fact and more in doctrine and all his Prophecies would be without Truth in the Original or Verification in the Event And when you can make out any one of these particulars against it then we will be ready to say the same thereof that you do That all is Cheat and Imposture and no credit or faith is any longer to be given thereto And 1st as to the matters of fact contained in the History of the New Testament whoever yet convicted any one of them of falsehood or whoever as much as endeavoured it in the age when the Books were first written when the falsehood might have been best proved had there been any such in them and the doing hereof would have so
much served the designs of those bitter enemies of the Christian Cause who from the first did the utmost they could to suppress it What Relations of matters of fact pass uncontradicted and uncontroll'd in the Age in which they were transacted and among those who thought themselves greatly concerned to have them believed false this must be taken for an undeniable argument of their truth And this Argument the History of the New Testament hath on its side in its fullest strength For the Books were written and published in the very age in which the things related in them were done yet no one then ever contradicted or convicted of falsehood any one passage in them though Christianity had from the very beginning the Professors of all other Religions in most bitter enmity against it who would have been most ready and glad so to do could they have found but the least pretence for it And had any of those Relations been false there were then means enough undeniably to have convicted them of it For those things which are related of Jesus Christ and his Apostles in the History of the New Testament are not there said to have been done in Corners where none where present to contradict them but upon the open Stage of the World and many of them in the sight of thousands and therefore had they not been really done or done otherwise than related there could not have wanted witnesses enough to make proof hereof And most certainly those who so bitterly opposed Christianity from the first would have found them out and made use of their Testimonies to the utmost for the overthrowing of the Cause they so violently opposed and had they done so to be sure we should have had those testimonies in the mouths of all its enemies ever since For they would have yielded them the strongest and the most prevailing argument they could possibly have urged against it The false pretences of 〈…〉 Impostors have been detected by 〈…〉 who lived in their times and the true History is given of them instead of the false ones which they gave of themselves And had Jesus Christ and his Apostles been like Impostors and the things related of them in the Books of the New Testament false and forged it is not possible to conceive especially in the circumstances above-mentioned how they could have escaped the like discovery but certainly in this case amidst so many witnesses who could have proved the falsehood and so many enemies who were eager to detect it all must have come out and every false Narrative would have been shown to be such and the true one given in its stead and we should have heard enough hereof from the adversaries of our holy Religion through every age since And that this was not done when there was such bitter opposition against the Christian Religion from the first propagating of it and it would have been so strong an argument against it can be assigned to no other cause but that the things related were so evidently and manifestly true as not to afford the least pretence for the contradicting of them But this is not all we have to say in the case For it hath not only hapned that none of those matters of fact have ever been contradicted or proved false by any of the first enemies of Christianity who were best able to have done so had there been that Imposture in them which you alledge but on the contrary many of them have been allowed true and attested by them For two of the most surprizing particulars related in the Gospels are confirmed by the Testimony of Heathen Writers I mean the murder of the Innocents by Herod at Bethlehem and the wonderfull Eclipse of the Sun which hapned at the death of our Saviour contrary to the nature of a Solar Eclipse when the Moon was in the Full. Macrobius tells us of the former and Phlegon Trallianus of the latter And that which is the most important part of all and bears the greatest Testimony to the truth of the whole was allowed and acknowledged on all hands both by Jews and Heathens even in their bitterest opposition against the Christian Cause I mean the account which is given in those sacred Books of the Miracles of our Saviour For both of them have yielded to the truth hereof only the Jews say that he wrought them by virtue of the Tetragrammaton or the sacred Name Jehovah stolen by him out of the Temple which the ridiculousness of the Fable they relate concerning it sufficiently confutes and the Heathens by Magic Art And therefore Philostratus and Hierocles finding no other way to overthrow the authority which those Miracles gave his Religion confronted against him the History of Apollonius Tyanoeus whom they pretend by the same Art of Magic to have done as wonderfull things and by this means endeavoured at least to invalidate those miraculous Works of his which they could not deny And 2dly As to the Prophecies of our Saviour the truth of their event in every particular proves the truth of him that predicted them For did he not come from God how could he have this wonderfull Knowledge as thus to fore-tell things to come Were he not of the Secrets of the Almighty how could he so certainly have fore-shown what in after-times he would bring to pass If it were only by guess that he did so how possibly could all things so exactly fall out in the event that nothing should in the least happen otherwise than as he predicted especially since as to most of them it cannot be as much as said that there was any place for humane sagacity or the least probable conjecture to help him to any fore-sight therein For how improbable was it that the Religion which he taught should against the bent of the whole World have made so great and speedy progress therein as he fore-told that it should or that such instruments as he imployed in this work a company of poor ignorant and contemptible Fishermen should ever have been able to have effected it without the extraordinary Providence of God over-ruling the hearts as well as the power of Men a thing in the ordinary course of humane affairs so unlikely to succeed could never have been brought to pass or could our Saviour have any manner of ground from the nature of the thing so much as to guess at so strange an event and therefore could never have so punctually foretold it but that being sent of God to begin this work he foreknew all that he would do for the perfecting of it And the same is to be said of what he further predicted of this holy Religion as to its continuance among us to the end of the World of the calling of the Gentiles thereinto and the rejecting of the Jews of the great calamities which should attend that people as accordingly they have through all Ages since and particularly of that great and terrible calamity which was to fall
People so indifferent in Religion first to manifest himself unto For the Jews were so far from being weary of that Religion which they had so long professed when he first appeared in his Mission among them that they were then grown into the contrary extreme a very extravagant bigottry and superstition concerning it so that nothing was more difficult than to withdraw them from it nor could any thing be more offensive to them than an offer tending thereto and so it continues with them even to this day And the case was not much otherwise as to all the rest of Mankind the Gentiles being then grown almost as tenacious of their Idolatry as the Jews of their Law and Learning was in that Age among both at the highest pitch that ever it was in the World and consequently Men were never less disposed than at that time to receive a new Religion or ever better able to defend their old And therefore had Christianity been an Imposture it could never have escaped in such an Age as that a full detection or ever have been able to have born up against it such inquisitive Heads and piercing Wits as were then in the World would have sifted it to the bottom dived into its deepest Secrets and unravell'd and laid open the whole Plot and the prejudiced World would immediately have crushed it to pieces thereon so that it should never more have appeared among Mankind But the truth of our holy Religion was such that it boldly offered it self to this trial and it seems to have chosen such an Age as this first to come into the World of purpose to undergo it that so it might be the better justified there by And justified by it it was for although it were opposed by the utmost Violence of the prejudiced World they could get no ground of it though it were throughly examined and diligently searched into by the acutest and subtilest Wits of those Ages in which it first appeared they could never discover any fraud or make out the least flaw therein but in spight of both it triumphed by its own naked Truth only over all manner of opposition and by God's Mercy continues still so to do even to this day That a cheat and a fraud in a thing of this nature should be imposed on Men totally ignorant and illiterate or that such as they when void of all manner of Religion as the Men of Mecca for the most part were when Mahomet began his Imposture among them should be easie to imbrace a new one is no hard matter to conceive but that an Imposture should be received and obtain such prevalency over Men in so learned and discerning an Age as that wherein Christianity first appeared in the World or that they who where then so zealously addicted to the Religion they had been educated in whether Jews or Gentiles should ever have been induced to forsake it for a new one founded only on a cheat and fraud is what morally speaking we may very well reckon impossible 7. Mahomet offered at no Prophecies that he might not run the hazard of being confuted by the Event But Jesus Christ delivered many clear and plain Prophecies several of which respected that very Age in which he lived and were all in their proper time as plainly verified by the completion of them 8. Mahomet offered at no Miracles in publick although continually called upon and provoked to it by his opposers For not being able to work any true ones or would not hazard himself to a discovery by those which were Counterfeit And therefore all those things which he would have go for Miracles that is his Converse with the Angel Gabriel his Journey to Heaven and the Armies of Angels that helped him in his Battles are only related by him as things acted behind the Curtain of which there was no other witness but himself alone and consequently there could be no witness on the other side ever to contradict them But Jesus Christ and his Apostles having the real power of working Miracles did them openly in the sight of thousands where all manner of opportunity was given to every spectator to examine into them and try whether they were true or no and therefore had there been any cheat or fraud in them it is not possible to conceive how they should have escaped a discovery And yet no such discovery could ever be made which was so convincing an argument of their truth and reality that even the bitterest enemies of our holy Religion from the first yielded in this particular and both Jews and Heathens allowed all those miraculous Works which are related of our Saviour and his Apostles in the Books of the New Testament to have been really and truly wrought by them as hath been afore-observed And indeed the evidence was too manifest to be denied since those very blind that received their sight those dumb that were enabled to speak those deaf that were restor'd to their hearing those lame that were made to walk and those dead that were raised again to life lived many years after to be as standing Monuments of the truth of those things which no one could contradict And therefore the Opposers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ have all along rather chosen to invalidate the authority of those Miracles than deny the truth and reality of them For they allowing the matters of fact object that there are other Powers lower than the divine that are able to bring them to pass and therefore although those Works were wrought they do not yet prove either the persons or the doctrines which they taught to come from God and consequently can give no such evidence as that which we insist upon from them for the truth of that Religion which we profess That others by Magick Art have done the same things That the Scriptures themselves tell us so of Jannes and Jambres and Simon Magus and profane Writers of Apollonius Tyanoeus Apuleius and others that both Moses and Jesus Christ knew this very well and therefore forewarn'd their Disciples against it telling them that false Prophets should arise who should show signs and wonders to deceive if possible the very Elect and that they should take care not to hearken to them And therefore say they if signs and wonders can be wrought by false Prophets how can they be evidences for the true Or how can we at all rely upon them for the verifying of any doctrine which they deliver unto us Or if those Miracles which were wrought by them who are sent of God be only true Miracles and all others false ones how shall we distinguish the one from the other so as by them to discern whether the doctrines be of God or no But these Difficulties will be easily removed and the Miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles as they are allowed to be truly wrought by them so also will they as truly prove the Doctrines which they taught to come from God if you
or Good Spirits never work those Wonders but in subserviency to the Will of God for the promoting of Truth and Righteousness but the Devil and his Evil Spirits only for the promoting of Errour and Wickedness 2. Angels or Good Spirits never co-operate in the production of those Wonders with any Prophet or Teacher but such only as being sent of God are good and righteous Persons but the Devil and his Evil Spirits only with such as not being sent of God are Evil like themselves 3. Angels or Good Spirits never exert their Power to work these Wonders but in things serious and grave whereby either the Good of Men or the Honour of God is promoted but the Devil and his Evil Spirits do it mostly in things mischievous both to God's Honour and Man's Good or else in such trivial and foolish matters as are beneath God or his holy Angels to be concerned in And by the same Marks also may we distinguish God's Miracles from the Devils Juggles and those wonderfull Works which the Hand of the Almighty really effecteth from those false Appearances which the Devil makes in imitation of them to put a cheat and a delusion upon us Which Particulars being premised the Answer to the foregoing Objections will be as followeth 1. We do acknowledge that abundance of very wonderfull Works may be effected by Powers lower than the divine and that not only by Good Spirits but also by Evil. 2. That therefore such Works alone are never sufficient proof of a divine Mission unless corroborated by such concurring circumstances as prove them not to be from Evil Spirits but only from Good 3. That where-ever such wonderfull Works are done at the word of a wicked Man or to a wicked purpose i. e. either to influence to a wicked practice or to give credit to some false doctrine or else in such mean and trivial cases as are beneath the Majesty of God or his Ministring Spirits to be concerned in there we may be sure that he that doth those Works how much soever he may pretend to a divine Mission is only a false Prophet and that it is not by the Power of God or his Good Spirits but only by the Power of the Devil and his Wicked Spirits that they are wrought and against those Wonders is it and the Workers of them that Moses warneth the Jews and Jesus Christ his Disciples that they should be aware of them 4. Where they who work those Wonders are holy and righteous Men and do not teach any Doctrine contrary to the certain Dictates of Natural Religion or the Revelations of God afore given unto us and the Wonders which they work are in such serious and grave Matters as are not unworthy of God or his Ministring Spirits to be concerned in there we have no reason to suspect Satan's Power in the effecting of them and therefore such Works may although not of themselves alone yet with these concurring circumstances be sufficient proof of the truth of any Doctrine which they give testimony unto For although they cannot be proved to be immediately from God because produceable by inferiour Beings yet with these circumstances accompanying them they must at least appear to be the Works of his Ministring Spirits who can bear testimony to nothing but what is from God whose Will they are in all things subservient unto 5. As such Works which the Devil and his Evil Spirits can do are not of self-sufficient proof to a divine Mission so neither are such which he can by juggle or delusion imitate because Men may be deceived by the one as well as the other and therefore the same concurring circumstances are necessary to these also and by the same Marks are they to be tried whether they be of God or no. 6. But where the Works are such as no created Being can either really produce or by juggle or delusion imitate there those Works do of themselves alone prove a divine Mission and give an authentick Seal of undeniable Truth to every Doctrine thus revealed unto us 7. Although therefore it should be allowed that some of the Miracles which Christ and his Apostles wrought might be produceable by Powers lower than the divine yet since they who did them were most holy and righteous Persons and did not teach any Doctrine contrary either to the Dictates of Natural Religion or the Revelations of God afore given unto Men and the Miracles themselves were not in such mean and trivial cases as are related of Apollonius Tyanoeus and others like him with these circumstances they sufficiently appear to be if not immediately from the hand of God yet at least from his Ministring Spirits and their Works since all done in subserviency to the divine Will do as thoroughly prove a divine Mission where-ever they evidently appear to be theirs as those of God himself That Christ and his Apostles were most holy and righteous Persons and taught no Doctrine which was in the least contrary to the Dictates of Natural Religion hath been afore shown and how far their Miracles were from being in mean and trivial matters the Works themselves make evident And it is as certain that no Doctrine of theirs ever contradicted in the least any divine Revelation afore-given unto Men. For Jesus Christ and his Apostles every-where allow both the Law and the Prophets to be from God Had they taught any thing which would have charged a falsehood on either they must then indeed have been said to contradict divine Revelations afore-given and would thereby have fallen under that character and mark of false Prophets which I have above laid down but they were so far from this that the Law and the Prophets were the ground-work which they founded all their Doctrines upon For the Law contained in Types and Shadows and the Prophets in their Prophecies and dark Sayings what-ever the Gospel hath in substance and reality since clearly delivered unto us and laid down all that in the first Rudiments which Christ and his Apostles afterwards built up into perfection in that holy Religion which they have given unto us And therefore although the Gospel hath abolished the Law it was not by contradicting or condemning it but by perfecting and fulfilling it in that manner as all the Prophets fore-showed that it should 8. But the Miracles of Jesus Christ and his Apostles were most of them undeniably such as could not be produced but by the immediate hand of God himself as necessarily requiring the creating Power to effect them and also of that permanency as allowed no room for juggle or delusion to take place in them For what other Power but that of the Almighty could raise a Man who had been four days dead again to life Or what other hand but that of the Creator himself could make him see who had been without the natural organs of Sight from his very birth Or what but the same Power which first formed Man of the dust of the Earth could
upon them in the destruction of Jerusalem and accordingly hapned about forty years after which he so exactly fore-told not only as to the time for he said it should be before that generation should pass away but also as to all other the most considerable circumstances of it that nothing can be a more exact and perfect Comment on the 24th Chapter of St. Matthew and those other passages in the Gospels where this dismal destruction is fore-told than that History of Josephus which gives us an account how it was brought to pass And that part of the Prophecy which relates to the final destruction of the Temple fore-telling that one stone should not be left upon another hath been so exactly verified that notwithstanding several attempts which have been made for the re-edifying of it it could never be effected no not as far as the laying of one stone upon another in order thereto even to this day And when Julian the Apostate out of design to confront this Prophecy and give the lie thereto imployed both the Power and the Treasure of the Roman Empire for the rebuilding of it Heaven it self interposed in an extraordinary manner to make good what he had predicted to be the established purpose of the Almighty which nothing was able to alter and by a miraculous Fire destroyed the Work as fast as it was built and at length forced the Undertakers totally to desist therefrom For the truth whereof I will not referr you to the Testimony of Socrates Scholasticus Sozomen Chrysostom or any other of the Christian Writers who relate it but to one whom you cannot suspect of serving the interest of the Christian Cause herein he being as much an Adversary thereto as any of you I mean Ammianus Marcellinus who was an Heathen Writer and then served under Julian in his Wars in the East at the same time when this hapned His Words concerning it lib. 23. c. 1. are as followeth Ambitiosum quondam apud Hierosolymam Templum quod post multa interneciva certamina obsidente Vespasiano posteaque Tito oegre est expugnatum instaurare sumtibus excogitabat immodicis negotiumque maturandum Alypio dederat Antiochensi qui olim Britannos curaverat pro Proefectis Cum itaque rei idem fortiter instaret Alypius juvaretque Provincioe Rector metuendi globi flammarum prope fundamenta crebris assultibus erumpentes fecere locum exustis aliquoties operantibus inaccessum hocque modo Elemento destinatius repellente cessavit inceptum i. e. Julian having a design to re-build with extraordinary expence the Temple of Jerusalem formerly a very stately Structure which first Vespasian and after Titus laying siege thereto was after many bloody Conflicts at length with difficulty taken and destroyed committed the care of the business to Alypius the Antiochian who formerly had been Proprefect of Britanny to be with all speed expedited by him But while Alypius was diligently pressing on the Work and the Governour of the Province helping him therein dreadfull Balls of Fire breaking forth from the Foundations of the Building did by their frequent Eruptions make the Place unaccessible the Workmen being several times destroyed by the Fire as they went to their Labour and by this means the Element still persisting as of purpose to obstruct it the Work ceased And it hath never since been again attempted even to this day nor is there now left the least remainder of its Ruins to show so much as the Place where this Temple once stood or have those who Travel thither any other Mark whereby to find it out but the Mahometan Mosque erected on the same Plat by Omar the second Successour of Mahomet and which hath now continued for above a thousand years to pollute with the worst of Superstitions that sacred Ground on which it was formerly built Had our Saviour been an Impostor and foretold all these things without any knowledge of the Counsels of him who was to bring them to pass something certainly must have hapned in the event of so many particulars as would have given the Lye to his Predictions and you the opportunity of convicting him thereof by plain matters of fact falling out contrary to them And although this could not have been done at first but possibly such Prophecies as these might have imposed for a while on the credulity of many yet we that have passed the time of their completion could never be deceived thereby but by the Event must plainly know Whether what he foretold be true or false and from thence have enough to make a judgment also of the truth of him that predicted them And therefore had our Saviour like Mahomet invented his Religion to deceive the World if he intended it should have continued he must have taken the same course that Mahomet did and never ventured at any Prophecy at all that he might not be confuted by the Event and so lose his whole design If you answer That our Saviour fore-told future Events after the same manner as the Pharisees said he wrought his Miracles that is by the Prince of the Devils you ascribe that knowledge to the wicked one which is above his reach to attain unto The Oracles which he gave in the Heathen Temples only prove him able to cheat Mankind with dubious and dark Answers but never clearly to inform them of the future Purposes of the Almighty And indeed how ever can it be imagin'd that such an accursed one as he that is cast off at the greatest distance from God who alone governs all the Works of his Creation and by the Wisdom of his Providence orders every Event that attends them should ever be so privy to his Counsels as to be able to foreknow any thing that he determines concerning them unless it be where he himself is imployed as an Executioner of his Justice to bring it to pass But all our Saviour's Predictions were clear and full fore-telling things to come in the same manner as Historians relate them when past without ambiguity in the words or perplexity in the matter or the least room left for evasion of deceit in them and were all as exactly fulfill'd in their appointed time and we have the continuance of his Gospel the spreading of it through all the Nations of the Earth the rejection of the Jews the calamities of those people in a continued Exile and the total destruction of their Temple standing Evidences hereof even to this day And how could all this have ever hapned so exactly according to his Word but that he was that holy and blessed One who had the Counsels of the Almighty communicated unto him and was sent by Him on purpose to declare unto us as many of them as were necessary for us to know in order to the attaining of everlasting life And 3dly As to the Doctrinal part of his Religion what can be more worthy of God than the notions which he gives us of him and the worship which he directs us to
restore him in so many instances as our Saviour and his Apostles did to health and perfection when the very Parts and Vessels necessary thereto were thoroughly perished and in so miraculous a manner with a word of their mouth bring back total privations again to their former habits Or what craft of Satan can reach as much as to an imitation of such wonderfull Works as these which left behind them for many years after effects of lasting permanency in the persons cured not only to be Monuments of the things done but also undeniable evidences of the truth and reality of them It would be too long to go over all the Miracles of this nature which Christ and his holy Apostles did for the confirmation of those holy Truths which they taught These already mentioned are sufficient to show that some of their Miracles at least were such as are above the Powers of all created Beings either to effect or imitate and therefore these certainly must be allowed to be from God alone without possibility of Imposture deceit or delusion in them and in that they are so they must necessarily prove the Mission of them at whose word they were done to be from him also and consequently become a witness to the truth of every Doctrine delivered by them as firm certain and infallible as the Veracity of God himself which can never err or deceive for ever And so much of the fifth Mark of Imposture SECT VI. VI. No Imposture when entrusted with many Conspirators can be long concealed For what Plot or Conspiracy have we ever known or heard of which hath been thus managed and hath not had some false Brother or other to discover it especially if there be any great Wickedness intended by it or any great Danger attending the execution of it as mostly is in such designs For then if the thing it self doth not work the Conscience into an abhorrence the fear of the Consequence may at least deterr from it and it seldom fails but one of these two in all such cases drives some or other into a discovery and in this Age of Plots we have instances enough hereof And what Plot can be more wicked than to impose a false Religion upon Mankind and what can be more dangerous than to attempt it What hath been already said sufficiently proves both these Particulars and therefore if the first planting of Christianity were such a Plot certainly one of these two that is either the Wickedness or the Danger would have wrought some or other into a discovery of it For they were not a few that were admitted thereinto They were at least five hundred that were in that which you must call the greatest secret of it I mean the Resurrection of our Saviour from the dead For that is the main Article of our holy Christian Religion the truth of which proves all the rest and without which all the rest must have fallen to the ground and our whole Faith become vain And therefore had but any one of these five hundred who are asserted to have been the Witnesses of it discovered the thing to have been only a Conspiracy of Imposture between them this discovery must have laid open the whole design and put a total end thereto And were not the thing certainly true which they attested it is scarce to be conceived but that some or other of them must have done so Among the twelve Apostles one was found a Traytor to his Master and how much more then may we expect that there should have been one such among five hundred and especially in a case where all ought to have been so that is to discover a Plot against the Souls of all Mankind and deliver the World from being imposed on thereby Among so many it scarce happens but some or other prove false to the best Cause and how hard is it then to conceive that in such a number none should be found to betray the worst And can we call it any other than the worst if it be such an Imposture as you would have it to be Were Christianity really such and this Doctrine of the Resurrection of our Saviour totally the Forgery of those who attested it so many as five hundred could never have all kept the Secret or if they should out of love to their own invention or any self-ends which they might have therein be inclined so to do yet punishment pain and torture use to extort the most hidden devices and make the most obstinate offenders the closest designers and the most reserved plotters of mischief to come to a Confession And what punishments what pains what tortures did those first Witnesses of this main and fundamental Article of our Faith go through for the sake of that Testimony which they did bear thereto and yet did any one of them ever flinch from it did any one of them ever retract what he had attested concerning it Prove but this and then you will say something to make out the Charge which you lay against it But they were so far here-from that they all persisted in it to the last and not only so but were every one of them ready to shed their blood for a witness to the truth of what they asserted and a great many of them actually did so and all the terrours threats and tortures of the Persecutours were not able to deterr them herefrom And what greater evidence then can there be given to any truth in the World which depends upon matter of fact than that which Christianity hath from the Testimony of those Men in so great a number and such a manner bearing witness thereto SECT VII VII The last Mark of an Imposture is That it can never be established without force and violence For if it hath wicked Men for its Authors worldly Interest for its End Falsity and Errour for its Doctrines and receives its Rise from the craft and fraud of its first Promoters as I have already shown the search of the inquisitive will soon find it out and Mankind will not long bear the Imposture unless they be over-ruled by Violence and have all Objections against it silenced with the Sword at their Throats This was the Method which Mahomet took to establish that false Religion which he invented For he prosecuted with War all that would not submit thereto and made it no less than Death for any to gain-say it or as much as raise the least dispute against any of the Doctrines of it And without his doing this the reason of all Mankind must have appeared against it and it could never have stood And the Romanists have learnt from him to take the same course as to those Doctrines of Imposture which they have super-added to the Christian Religion For they declare all those to be Hereticks and prosecute them with Sword Fire and Faggot that refuse to receive them and thus by the Power of their Dragoons and their Inquisitions they have established and
still keep up those gross errours in their Church which neither Reason nor Religion can ever support and the same must be done as to all other falsities imposed on mankind before they can have any firm footing among them For it is only force and violence that can cram such things down men's throats which their reason and their judgment must ever renounce The unthinking multitude may for a while be carried away by the craft of the Impostor and by the arts of Hypocrisie and Delusion be made easie to swallow any forgery that shall be offered â—nto them but when the heat of the firsâ— zeal is over and the matter comes to be examined into by reason and coolly scanned through by the inquisitive Imposture cannot stand the Test but muâ—â— soon be laid open blasted and exploded thereon And therefore unless it be accompanied with force to suppress this inquiry and hath power on its side to compell Men to acquiesce therein how much soever it may delude Men at first it can never obtain any lasting establishment among them And this hath been the case of all the Impostors which have ever yet appeared in the World without this power to back them and how great progress soever any of them may have made in the first heat they have all at length been detected and exploded and sunk to nothing for want of this support on their side to keep them up For nothing but truth can of it self alone stand the Test of ages upon its own bottom only Falsehood and errour are too weak for such a Trial and therefore unless supported by some external strength and fenced thereby against all assaults of opposers they must necessarily fall to the ground and again come to nothing and where education or the force of long received custom is not strong enough for this and neither can in the first propagating of an Imposture there the sword must come in to over rule all or nothing of this nature can be established among Men. But Jesus Christ and his Apostles instead of making use of any such force to establish the Religion which they taught had all the force and powers of the World in opposition against it and yet in spight of the World it at length prevailed over the World by the dint of its own truth only and after having stood the assault of all manner of persecutions as well as other oppositions for three hundred years together carried the victory over the fiercest of its enemies and made the greatest of them even the Roman Emperours themselves to submit thereto and all this while it had sharpned against it not only the Sword of the Superiour Powers but also the tongues of the slanderers and the wits of all the learned of those times But how much soever it was oppressed by the first of these blackned by the second and sifted and searched into by the last it stood all these Trials without losing any thing thereby but at last came out of them all like Gold out of the Furnace still of the same weight fineness and purity without receiving from that fire which consumeth all things else the least wast or diminution thereof Had it been false and owed its Original only to Deceit and Imposture it would have needed all those means of Violence for its establishment and support but since it thus stood not only without them but also in spight of them when all armed on the adversaries side for three Centuries together in bitter opposition against it what greater argument can we have for the truth thereof For can you think that Falshood and Imposture could ever have held out with such steady and unshaken constancy for so many years as Christianity thus did or that it is possible for any sort of Men so long to have born all this for the sake of a Lye Falshood can have no foundation for such a Constancy or Imposture any reason to engage Men thereto The interest of this World is ever the bottom and foundation of all such Forgeries and therefore as soon as punishments and persecutions make it to be no Man's interest to be for them they ever fall of themselves for want of that foundation on which they afore-stood But Christianity having come into the World contrary to all the interests of it and in its very infancy thus stood the shock of all the powers thereof engaged in persecution against it as I have mentioned and not only so but also prospered and became established in the midst of the hottest assaults thereof this plainly shows that it had another kind of foundation on which it was built a foundation of Truth and Righteousness and not only so but a foundation that was laid and fix'd in such a manner by the hand of God himself as never to be shaken For what truth of it self alone could ever have made its way into the World in such a manner as the Christian Religion did or ever have gained against all the powers thereof such a prevalency over it without some extraordinary assistance conducting and helping it therein The strongest Truths we know are crush'd by such means of violence as that encountred with and even first principles themselves have been over-powered by them And therefore that Christianity should thus enter the World and thus from its first Entry bear up against such long and terrible Trials of persecution and oppression as it met with without the least flinching under them must be owing to somewhat more than its own bare truth And what but the hand of God himself backing and strengthening it in the conflict could be sufficient to give it such a victory therein For that a few poor Fishermen the Disciples of a Crucified Master should without power learning or reputation or any other of the interests or favours of the world on their side be able to introduce a new Religion into the World directly opposite to all the interests pleasures and prevailing humours of it as Christianity then was and that this Religion in spight of all the powers cunning malice and learning of the World joyned together in most fierce opposition and bitter persecution against it for three hundred years together should not only bear up but also at length prevail over the World and subject the highest powers therein to the obedience of its Laws is an event so strange and wonderfull and morally speaking so far above the possibility of all ordinary means to bring it to pass as plainly manifesteth the extraordinary working of God himself therein And for my part had Christian Religion no other Miracle to bear witness thereto this alone would be Miracle enough to me sufficiently to convince me of the truth thereof At least since it thus entered into the World and thus became established in it it must be allowed to be so far differing from an Imposture in that method of violence which that needs for its establishment as to be totally opposite thereto and in this
I desire to know among what sort of Men you will place them while you thus plead their excuse For they must be one of these three that is either Atheists Deists or Believers of an instituted Religion 1. If you say they are Atheists that word alone contains enough to prove them perfectly wicked whatever can be said to the contrary It is indeed agreeable enough to the Principes of this sort of Men that such an Imposture as we are treating of may laudably be made use of to a good End For they hold that all Religion is nothing else but a device of Politicians to keep the World in awe But if the Atheist be the deviser what intention of Good can the device carry therewith None certainly towards God since he utterly denies his Being or can it in this case have any towards Men since by denying him for whose sake it is that we are to do good to others he casts off therewith all the reason and obligation which he hath abstractive of his own interest of doing any such at all All the good therefore that such an one can aim at must totally center in himself to advance his own enjoyments and gratifie his own lusts in all those things which his corrupt affections carry him after and to enjoy these without restraint of Laws or fear of punishment being that alone which is the real and true cause that makes any Man deny that supreme and infinitely good and just Being whom all things else prove whoever is an Atheist must be perfectly wicked before he can be such and what is there which can while in that impiety ever give him a better character afterwards 2. If you say they are Deists such as you profess your selves to be your main Principle is against all instituted Religion whatever as if God were dishonoured and Man injured by every thing of this nature practised among us and can you then think that any who are thus persuaded can without being first corrupted to a great degree of Impiety as well as Hypocrisie ever become themselves so contrary to their own Sentiments on any pretence whatsoever the Authors and Teachers of such a Religion among us 3. But if you place them among those who are Believers of an instituted Religion they must abolish that which they believe to be true before they can introduce that by Imposture which they know to be false And this must be the case of Jesus Christ and his Apostles if they were such Impostors as you hold them to be For they were educated and brought up in the Jewish Religion which they believed to be from God and the whole Tenour of the Religion which they taught supposeth it so to be and that it was the only true way whereby God was to be worshipped by them till they delivered their new Revelations which totally abolished this Religion and established the Christian in its stead and therefore if those Revelations were not true and real as they pretended they were but all forged and counterfeited by them as you say they must abolish a Religion which they believed to be true to make way for that which they knew to be false and thereby become wilfully and knowingly according to their own belief the Authors of leading Men from saving Truths into damning Errours to the utter destruction of their Souls for ever and also of depriving God of that acceptable Worship whereby he was truly honour'd according to his own appointment to introduce in its stead a false superstition of their own devising which must be constant dishonour unto him as long as practised among us And if Jesus Christ and his Apostles were such Impostors as all this imports and such they must be if they were Impostors at all they must be guilty of that impiety towards God as well as that injustice towards Men herein as must necessarily suppose them the wickedest of Men before they could arrive hereto and therefore if they were not such wicked Men this abundantly demonstrates they could not be such Impostors as you charge them to be As to the second Objection That a Man may be an Impostour through Enthusiasm and Mistake and falsely impose things for divine Revelations not out of a wicked design to deceive others but that he is herein really deceived himself and that therefore there is no necessity that all Impostors should be such wicked persons as I have alledged my Answer hereto is 1. I do acknowledge that Enthusiasm hath carried Men into very strange conceits and extravagancies upon the foundation of a Religion already established as we have instances enough hereof in the Anabaptists of Germany the Quakers here with us the Batenists among the Mahometans and in some of the Recluses of the Church of Rome But that Enthusiasm could ever go so far as to fansie a divine Revelation for the establishing of a new Religion and upon such a fansie propagate that Religion in the World as if it came from God is that which I cannot believe and there is no instance that I know of that can be given hereof But 2dly Allowing it possible this Objection then as applied to the case in hand must suppose Jesus Christ and his Apostles to have been deceived by Enthusiasm into the Religion which they taught and that therefore although they were by no means such wicked Men as a wilfull Imposture must suppose them to be yet still they might be Impostors by mistake and being by Enthusiasm so far deluded as to think that to come to them from God by divine Revelation which had no other birth but from their own wild fancies might preach it to Men as such not out of a wicked design to deceive but that they were really herein deceived themselves But is it possible for any Man to conceive that so grave so serious and so wisely a framed Religion as Christianity is could ever be the spawn of Enthusiasm Whatsoever is the product of that useth ever to be like the Parent wild and extravagant in all its parts often disagreeing with all manner of Reason and often as much with it self But Christianity is in all its parts as rational as it is good giving us the justest Notions of God the best Precepts of our duty towards Him and the exactest Rules of living honestly and righteously with each other and hath a thorough conformity to it self in every particular of it on which account it hath been approved and admired for the excellency of its composure and the wisdom of its constitutions even by the best and wisest of those who never submitted thereto and therefore always carries with it Marks and Evidences enough in the very Nature of it sufficiently to prove it vastly above the power of such a Cause ever to produce it 3. The Founder and first Teachers of Christianity gave such evidences for the truth thereof as Enthusiasm could never produce For can Enthusiasm raise the dead to life again cure all manner of