per; in my next I purpose to conclude by answering those arguments on which modern cavillers have grounded their reasonings against the gospel miracles; a subject to which I have been led by Dr. MacInfidel's discourse, of which some notice has been taken in former papers.

It has been unfortunate for Pythagoras, that the writers of Julian's time, to pay court to the emperor, should have corrupted their account of him with so many fictions and absurdities; for he was truly a very wonderful man: but when they undertook to depreciate the character of Christ, his doctrines and miracles, by ascribing actions to Pythagoras equal, or, as they conceived, superior to what Christ had done upon earth, they were driven to strange resources in deifying their philosopher; for in fact the time was rather past for those delusions; deification after death was the most that could be attempted, and even the Julium Sidus held its place in the heavens by a precarious tenure: at the same time, an apotheosis would not serve their purpose; it was necessary to make Pythagoras a god, or the son of a god, and to give him a supernatural birth from the womb of a virgin their next business was to invest him with the power of working miracles; but here some stubborn facts laid in their way; he had visited Epimenides in his last sickness without being able to prolong his life; they were driven to ridiculous resources; and, taking Abaris's arrow in aid, sent their philosopher upon it through the air from Metapontum to Taurominium; because Christ had walked on the sea, Pythagoras rode through the skies; because Christ had been forty days fasting in the wilderness, Pythagoras was to be forty days without food in the Temple of the Muses at Metapontum; because Christ descended into Hades, and rose again from the dead, and appeared upon earth, Pythagoras de

scended to the shades below, remained there a complete year, saw Homer, Hesiod, and other departed spirits, returned upon earth wan and emaciated, and reported what he had seen in full assembly of his disciples, whilst his mother, by his special direction before his descent, registered upon tablets all that passed, and noted the times of his temporary death and resurrection: to carry on the competition, he was made to allay winds, tempests, and earthquakes, to cure diseases whether of mind or body, and to foretell to certain fishermen, whom he found at work, how many fish they should enclose in their net: the reader who has consulted Porphyry and Jamblichus, will call to mind other coincidences.

With what superior, what incontestable strength of evidence does the disciple of Christ meet the disciple of Pythagoras in his comparison between their masters! The heathen teacher was almost a miracle of erudition; he traversed the East in pursuit of science, and collected knowledge, wherever it was to be found, with unremitting industry: Christ lived in privacy and obscurity, educated only in the humble trade and occupation of his parents, to whom he was obedient and devoted, till he set out upon the functions of his mission. The person of the first was captivating and comely, not to be approached but with awe and adoration, with preparatory penances and rigid initiations, with every artifice to set him off that human wit could devise; the other was despised and rejected of men,' the simplest and the meekest being that ever walked the earth; conversing freely with all men, presenting himself to the poor and lowly, to women and to little children; in him was no form of comeliness,' that men should desire; no artifice or trick to catch applause or to excite surprise; if he exercised his miraculous power in healing the infirm, or reviving the dead, he did it in silence, and under in

junction of secrecy, directing men to pay their thanks to God alone, and forbidding them even to call him good. No magic numbers nor mystic symbols obscured his doctrines, but he delivered the simple system of his pure morality in little easy anecdotes, levelled to the capacity, and fitted to the memory of the poorest and most illiterate. From such he chose his disciples, that the wisdom of this world' might have no share in his ministry, and he rested upon the weakest agents the task of preaching and propagating the sublimest religion. Gloomy enthusiasts have buried themselves in deserts and caverns of the earth, to brood in solitude, and spend their days in penances and prayers; ambitious innovators have been carried to the highest pitch of human greatness by becoming founders of a new religion; but Christ taught his disciples neither to shun society, nor to disturb authorities; he told them, indeed, that they should die for the faith they professed, but it was not the death of soldiers, but of martyrs, they should suffer, and these precepts he confirmed by his own example, being led like a lamb to the slaughter;' if they who profess his religion were to practise it, Universal Love and Benevolence would obtain upon earth.

But of the internal evidences of Christ's religion I am not now to speak; so long as the distinctions between good and evil exist, these can need no defence; if men agree in the one, they cannot differ or dispute about the other. With regard to the gospel account of Christ's miracles, I may be allowed, in general, to observe, that these forgeries of Porphyry and Jamblichus, in imitation of them, warrant a fair presumption, that if these writers could have disproved the authority of the Evangelists, and controverted the matter of fact, they would not have resorted to so indecisive and circuitous a mode of opposing them, as

this which we are now examining: men of such learning as these writers would not have risked extravagant fictions, merely to keep way with a history which they had more immediate means of refuting: on the other hand, if their absurdity should lead any man to suppose that they forged these accounts by way of parody, and in ridicule of the gospels, the accounts themselves give the strongest evidence to the contrary, and it is clear, beyond a doubt, that both Porphyry and Jamblichus mean to be credited in their histories of Pythagoras, as seriously as Philostratus does in his of Apollonius Tyaneus.

This will more fully appear by referring to the circumstances that occasioned these histories to be written.

Christ having performed his miracles openly and before so many witnesses, it is not found that the matter of fact was ever questioned by any who lived in that age; on the contrary, we see it was acknowledged by his most vigilant enemies, the Pharisees: they did not deny the miracle, but they ascribed it to the aid of the prince of the devils; so weak a subterfuge against the evidence of their own senses probably satisfied neither themselves nor others; if it had, this accusation of sorcery (being capital by their law, and also by that of the Romans) would have been heard of, when they were so much to seek for crimes, wherewith to charge him on his trial: if any man shall object, that this is arguing out of the gospels in favour of the gospels, I contend that this matter of fact does not rest solely on the gospel evidence, but also upon collateral historic proof; for this very argument of the Pharisees, and this only, is made use of by those Jews, whom Celsus brings in arguing against the Christian religion; and those Jews, on this very account, rank Christ with Pythagoras; and I challenge the cavillers against Christ's miracles

either to controvert what is thus asserted, or to produce any other argument of Jewish origin, except this ascribed to the Pharisees by the gospel, either from Celsus, as above mentioned, or any other writer.

Celsus, it is well known, was a very learned man, and wrote in the time of Adrian, or something later; this was not above fifty years after the date of Christ's miracles. Celsus did not controvert the accounts of them who were witnesses of the miracles, or attempt to shew any inconsistence or chicanery in the facts themselves; he takes up at second-hand, the old Pharisaical argument of ascribing them to the power of the devil: in short, they were performed, he cannot deny it; there was no trick or artifice in the performance, he cannot discover any; the accounts of them are no forgeries, he cannot confute them; they are recent histories, and their authenticity too notorious to be called in question: he knows not how the miracles were performed, and therefore they were done by the invocation of the devil; he cannot patiently look on and see that learning, so long the glory of all civilized nations, and which he himself was to an eminent degree possessed of, now brought into disgrace by a new religion, professing to be a divine revelation, and originating from amongst the meanest and most odious of all the provincial nations, and propagated by disciples, who were as much despised and hated by the Jews in general, as the Jews were by all other people. Unable to disprove the account, and at a loss how to parry it from hearsay, or from what he finds in former writers, he has no other resource but to bring forward again those cavilling Pharisees, and roundly to assert in general terms (which he does more than once) that these miracles are all the tricks of a sorcerer,' and for this he expects the world should take his authority.

I have said that Celsus adduces neither oral nor