credible; they must either have grounded it upon authority, or reported it upon hearsay; they must have admitted it with its date and circumstances at the very crisis when it happened, and in that case what would have been the consequence of such a publication? The Christians would naturally have made the application to the passion of Christ, and how dangerous was it for a heathen to admit a fact open to such an interpretation? A Roman philosopher, giving a serious history of extraordinary and prodigious events, would make his court but ill to a heathen persecuting emperor, by admitting this into the account, unless it was to confute it: now this does not appear to have been in contemplation with Seneca or Pliny in any part of their writings; each of these authors tells us what he credits and wishes to be credited, not what he disbelieves and wishes to confute: the defection of light at the time of Cæsar's death was the creed of the court; the historians, naturalists, and even the poets, celebrated that phænomenon, and it did not lose in their relations; but in the case of the darkness at Christ's death, a believer in Him and his miracles draws a stronger argument for his belief from the silence of Seneca and Pliny, than any caviller can urge against it from the same circumstance: if we admit they knew it, and yet did not record it, are we not better founded in supposing they were silent, because they could not controvert the fact, than our opponents are in saying it did not pass, because they do not mention it? It is too much to require of witnesses, that they should depose to a fact which is to convict themselves: I must therefore appeal to the candid reader, whether a philosopher writing in the court of Nero, who had charged the Christians with the burning of Rome, and was devising terrible and unheard-of modes of torturing

them upon this charge, who had beheaded Pauland crucified Peter for preaching Christ and the redemption of mankind earned by his Passion; whether a heathen philosopher, I say, writing at this very time an account of extraordinary, but what he delivers as true, events in nature, would venture upon putting into his account a miracle, tending to confirm the divine nature and mission of that person, whose immediate followers were then suffering under the most determined persecution? No heathen writer in his senses would have ventured to give such an account. Peter and Paul declared for the miracle, and were martyred for their doctrine; the gospel account declared for the miracle, and no one Roman writer controverted the assertion; this was the time for Seneca, for Pliny and other heathen writers to cry out against the glaring fiction,' Do the Christians say there was a general darkness when their master expired? We appeal to the fact against them; it reached not us at Rome; the light of that day was like the light of other days: Do they say it was partial to Judæa only? Be it so! We meet them on their own ground; we appeal to the Procurator Pilate, to the noble Romans resident in Judæa, to the soldiers, to the very centurion who attended his execution, to witness against this impudent attack upon men's senses. Let them pretend that he healed the sick, cured the lame, turned water into wine, or performed a thousand other juggling tricks, but darkness over a whole province can be confuted by the testimony of a whole province, and to this we appeal. Was this said? Was this appeal made? Strange perversion of reason to turn that into an argument against a thing, which seems conclusive for it! at least no negative can come nearer to conclusion, than contemporary silence in a case so open to confutation, had it not been true,

But Seneca and elder Pliny did not see the gospelLet it pass; let us grant all that the argument supposes; why are we told of no confutation of this miracle by any heathen writer contemporary with, or posterior to the gospel account of the Passion? The assertion of a preternatural event, so generally notorious, must have been open to proof. Would Celsus have overlooked it? Would not Lucian have taken it up? Should not we hear of its having been urged by Porphyry, who was so voluminous a controversialist? Should not we meet it in Julian or Philostratus? Should we hear nothing that could lead us to believe it was controverted by Jamblichus, or Hierocles in his books entitled Philalethes? If the silence of the heathen writers is to be appealed to for the purpose of impeaching Christ's miracles, let the appeal be made; whilst we confine ourselves to the defence of those miracles only, which are recorded in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, neither the silence of ancient, nor the eloquence of modern opponents, can shake the records on which we ground our faith.

NUMBER XII.

AT the same time that it is fair to suppose there must be more than ordinary merit in men, who rise to great opulence and condition in life from low beginnings, all the world must be sensible of the danger attending sudden elevation, and how very apt a man's head is to turn, who climbs an eminence to which his habits have not familiarized

him. A mountaineer can tread firm upon a precipice, and walk erect without tottering along the path that winds itself about the craggy cliff, on which he has his dwelling; whilst the inhabitant of the valley travels with affright and danger over the giddy pass, and oftentimes is precipitated from the height to perish in the gulph beneath his feet. Such is the fate of many, who by the revolutions of fortune are raised to lofty situations: it is generally the lot of such people to make few friends; in their danger there are none to give them warning, in their fall there are few to afford them pity.

This is not the case with them, who are born to the dignities they enjoy; the sovereign, whose throne is his inheritance, meets with pity and indulgence; pity for the cares inseparable from his condition, indulgence for the failings and excesses incidental to hereditary greatness; but the man who is the maker of his own fortune, acts on a stage where every step he takes will be observed with jealousy; amongst the many thousands who are set to watch him, let him reflect how many hearts there are, rankling with disappointed pride, and envying him the lot, which in their own conceit at least their merit had a better title to: when such a man appears, it is the common cry-I cannot bear that upstart-At the same time therefore that it must be allowed more natural to excuse the proud looks of the high, than the proud looks of the low, still it is no bad caution to beware of giving easy faith to reports against those, whom so many unsuccessful people are interested to decry; for though fortune can do mighty things amongst us, and make great men in this world, she cannot make friends.

If caution be necessary for such as are only lookers on upon these sudden changes in the scene of life, how much more wary should he be, who by

fortune's favour is the actor in it! Time past and present so abounds in examples to put him on his guard, that if he will not profit by example, what hope is there that precept will avail? That any man should grow arrogant who has once been dependant, is as unaccountable for the folly of the thing, as it is for the baseness of it; it is as if a pedagogue should turn tyrant, because he remembers to have smarted under the lash of the master when a schoolboy and yet there seems a principle in some natures that inclines them to this despicable species of revenge, by which they sacrifice all claim to reason, reputation, or religion. Dionysius, though the cruellest of all tyrants, had moderation in a private station, and made a good and patient schoolmaster; he handled the sceptre like a rod, and the rod as he should have done a sceptre. Are we to conclude from this and other instances, that humanity may be learnt by those who descend from power, but that men become tyrants by ascending to it?

Is there in nature any thing so ridiculous as pride, so self-destructive, so absurd? The man who rises out of humble life must have seen it, felt it, and remarked its folly; he must have been convinced that pride deprives itself of its own proper object; for every proud man, who assumes a superiority on the score of rank, or wealth, or titles, forfeits that better interest with mankind, which would have credited him for superiorities of a far nobler quality than those on which he grounds his silly arrogance: Ilow strange is it therefore, when the man, who has scen through the weakness of this passion in others, whilst below them in condition, should fall into the same folly when he rises to be their equal! And yet it happens every day. What is so hateful to a poor man as the purse-proud arrogance of a rich one? Let fortune shift the scene and make the poor man