NUMBER XI.

Chris

Ir seems natural to suppose that any great and signal revelation of the Divine Will should be authenticated to mankind by evidences proportioned to the importance of the communication. tians contend that in the purity and perfection of their religion, as it was taught by Christ, and in the miracles which he performed on earth whilst he was teaching, full and sufficient evidences are found of a Divine Revelation.

As for the religion of Christ it speaks for itself, the book is open which contains it, and however it may have degenerated in practice through the corruption of them who profess it, there seems no difference of opinion in the world as to the purity and perfection of its principles of these evidences therefore, which are generally called internal, I have no need to speak.

Is it not possible to make the same direct appeal to the miracles as to the religion of Christ? Many centuries have revolved since they have ceased; nature has long since resumed her course, and retains no traces of them; their evidences therefore are not, like those of Christ's religion, internal,but historical; it must, however, be acknowledged, that they are historical evidences of the strongest sort, for the historians were eye witnesses of what they relate, and their relations agree.

It is easy therefore to see, that if the system of Christianity is to be attacked, it is in this part only

the attack is to be expected. This has accordingly taken place in three different periods, and in three different modes.

The unbelieving Jews,contemporary with Christ, before whose eyes the miracles were performed, could not dispute their being done, but they attempted to criminate the doer by accusing him of a guilty communication with evil spirits, ascribing his supernatural deeds to the power of the devil. The heathens, who had not ocular demonstration, but could not contest facts so well established, made their attack upon his miracles, by instancing others, who had done things altogether as wonderful, viz, Pythagoras, Abaris, Apollonius, and others.

Thus the matter rested for many ages, till modern cavillers within the pale of the Christian church struck upon a new argument for an attack upon Christ's miracles; and this argument having been woven into a late publication, whose historical merit puts it into general circulation, many retailers of infidelity, (and Dr. Mac-Infidel amongst the rest) have caught at it as a discovery of importance, and as they have contrived to connect it with topics of more erudition than the generality of people are furnished with, on whom they practise, it has been propagated with some success, where it has had the advantage of not being understood.

The strength of this argument lies in the discovery, that contemporary authorities are silent on the subject of Christ's miracles: naturalists and the authors, who record all curious and extraordinary events of their own or of preceding times, make no mention of the wonderful things which Christ is said to have done in the land of Judæa; in short, the Evangelists are left alone in the account, and yet some things are related by them too general in their extent, and too wonderful in their nature, to have

been passed over in silence by these authors, or in other words not to have had a place in their collections: the elder Pliny and Seneca they tell us were living at the time of Christ's passion; the Evangelists relate, that there was darkness over the face of the earth when Christ gave up the ghost, and this darkness was miraculous, being out of the course of nature, and incidental to the divinity of the person, who was then offering up his life for the redemption of mankind. Against the veracity of the gospel account relative to this particular prodigy the attack is pointed; and they argue, that if it extended over the whole earth, elder Pliny and Seneca, with all others who were then living, must have noticed it; if it was local to the province of Judæa, men of their information must have heard of it: each of these philosophers has recorded all the great phænomena of nature which his curiosity and care could get together, and Pliny, in particular, has devoted an entire chapter to eclipses of an extraordinary nature, yet does not mention this at the Passion: the defection of light which followed Cæsar's murder, was not to be compared with what the gospel relates of the preternatural darkness at the Passion, and yet most of the writers of that age have recorded the former event, whilst all are silent as to the latter-Therefore it did not happen.

This I believe is a fair state of the argument, and if there be any merit in the discovery, it certainly rests with the moderns; for neither Celsus, Porphyry, nor his disciple Jamblichus, have struck upon it, though the first-mentioned wrote against Christianity in the time of Adrian, who succeeded to the empire eighty years after Christ's passion; as for Seneca, he died about thirty years, and elder Pliny three and forty years after Christ.

The fathers of the church, it seems, are divided

Ο

in opinion as to the darkness at Christ's passion being general to the whole earth, or local only to Judæa. As the decision of this point does not affect the general question, the abettors of the argu. ment are willing to admit with Origen, Beza, and others, that the prodigy should be understood as local to that part of the world, to which his other miracles were confined, and to whose conviction, if it really happened, it is natural to suppose it should be specially addressed.

Allowing this, these reasoners contend that it must of necessity have been reported to Rome, and that report must have been known to Seneca and elder Pliny, and, being known, must have been recorded by one or both. These positions merit examination.

The first point to be taken for granted is, that the miracle of the three hours darkness upon the passion of Christ must necessarily have been reported to Rome: this report was either to come in the state dispatches of the Procurator Pilate to the court of Tiberius, or from private communications: of the probability of the first case the reader must judge for himself from circumstances; it is merely matter of speculation: it involves a doubt at least, whether the Procurator would not see reasons personal, as well as political, against reporting to the court an event, which at best tended to his own crimination, and which, if he had delivered it for truth, might have alarmed the jealousy, or roused the resentment of his sovereign. The idea entertained by the Jews of deliverance from the Roman yoke by their expected Messias, was too general to have escaped the knowledge of their watchful tyrants, and it does not seem likely any Roman go. vernor of that province would be forward to report any miracle, or miracles, that had reference to a

person, who having set up a new religion declared himself that very Messias, which the Jewish prophecies foretold should appear to extirpate the Gentile idolatry if this be a reason for the Roman Procurator in Judæa to be silent on the subject, it is no less so for the people of Rome to reject the reports of the Christians themselves, if they ventured any; and as for the unbelieving Jews, it is not to be expected they would contribute to spread the evidences of Christ's divinity.

The next point to be taken for granted in the argument under examination is, that this report, if actually made, must have been known to the philosopher Seneca, and the naturalist Pliny; and I think it may fairly be allowed, that an event of this sort could not well fail of coming to the knowledge of Seneca, and even of Pliny (though he died fortythree years after the time), if the government in Tiberius's reign had been made acquainted with it by authority, and had taken no measures for suppressing it, or any accounts published at the time respecting it; for after all, it must be observed that this event not being found in Pliny's Natural History, nor in Seneca's Enquiries, does not by any means decide the question against any accounts being published, but leaves it still open to conjecture (and with some reason), that such accounts might have been suppressed by the heathen emperors,

But waving any further discussion of this point, we will pass to the third and last position; in which it is presumed, that if this preternatural eclipse at Christ's passion was known to Seneca and Pliny, one or both must have recorded it in their works.

This I think is begging a question very hardly to be granted; for these writers must have stated the event, either as a thing credible, or doubtful, or in.