are assumed or asserted by every one of them. I selves escape with impunity, or pursue their purThe names under which some of them came forth, pose in ease and safety. This probability, thus are the names of men of eminence in our histories. sustained by foreign testimony, is advanced, I What these books give, are not contradictions, think, to historical certainty, by the evidence of but unauthorized additions. The principal facts our own books; by the accounts of a writer who are supposed, the principal agents the same; which was the companion of the persons whose suffershows, that these points were too much fixed to ings he relates; by the letters of the persons thembe altered or disputed. selves; by predictions of persecutions ascribed to the Founder of the religion, which predictions would not have been inserted in this history, much less have been studiously dwelt upon, if they had not accorded with the event, and which, even if falsely ascribed to him, could only have been so ascribed, because the event suggested them; lastly, by incessant exhortations to fortitude and patience, and by an earnestness, repetition, and urgency, upon the subject, which were unlikely to have appeared, if there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for the exercise of these virtues. If there be any book of this description, which appears to have imposed upon some considerable number of learned Christians, it is the Sibylline oracles; but, when we reflect upon the circumstances which facilitated that imposture, we shall cease to wonder either at the attempt or its success. It was at that time universally understood, that such a prophetic writing existed. Its contents were kept secret. This situation afforded to some one a hint, as well as an opportunity, to give out a writing under this name, favourable to the already established persuasion of Christians, and which writing, by the aid and recommendation of these circumstances, would in some degree, it is probable, be received. Of the ancient forgery we know but little: what is now produced, could not, in my opinion, have imposed upon any one. is nothing else than the Gospel history, woven into verse; perhaps was at first rather a fiction than a forgery; an exercise of ingenuity, more than an attempt to deceive. CHAPTER X. Recapitulation. It THE reader will now be pleased to recollect, that the two points which form the subject of our present discussion, are first, that the Founder of Christianity, his associates, and immediate followers, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings; secondly, that they did so, in attestation of the miraculous history recorded in our Scriptures, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of that history. The argument, by which these two propositions have been maintained by us, stands thus: No historical fact, I apprehend, is more certain, than that the original propagators of Christianity voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The nature of the undertaking; the character of the persons employed in it; the opposition of their tenets to the fixed opinions and expectations of the country in which they first advanced them; their undissembled condemnation of the religion of all other countries; their total want of power, authority, or force; render it in the highest degree probable that this must have been the case. The probability is increased, by what we know of the fate of the Founder of the institution, who was put to death for his attempt; and by what we also know of the cruel treatment of the converts to the institution, within thirty years after its commencement; both which points are attested by heathen writers, and, being once admitted, leave it very incredible that the primitive emissaries of the religion, who exercised their ministry, first, amongst the people who had destroyed their Master, and, afterward, amongst those who persecuted their converts, should them It is made out also, I think, with sufficient evidence, that both the teachers and converts of the religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new course of life and behaviour. The next great question is, what they did this FOR. That it was for a miraculous story of some kind or other, is to my apprehension extremely manifest; because, as to the fundamental article, the designation of the person, viz. that this particular person, Jesus of Nazareth, ought to be received as the Messiah, or as a messenger from God, they neither had, nor could have, any thing but miracles to stand upon. That the exertions and sufferings of the apostles were for the story which we have now, is proved by the consideration that this story is transmitted to us by two of their own number, and by two others personally connected with them; that the particularity of the narrative proves, that the writers claimed to pos sess circumstantial information, that from their situation they had full opportunity of acquiring such information, that they certainly, at least, knew what their colleagues, their companions, their masters, taught; that each of these books contains enough to prove the truth of the religion; that, if any one of them therefore be genuine, it is sufficient; that the genuineness, however, of all of them is made out, as well by the general arguments which evince the genuineness of the most undisputed remains of antiquity, as also by peculiar and specific proofs, viz. by citations from them in writings belonging to a period immediately contiguous to that in which they were published; by the distinguished regard paid by early Christians to the authority of these books, (which regard was manifested by their collecting of them into a volume, appropriating to that volume titles of peculiar respect, translating them into various languages, digesting them into harmonies, writing commentaries upon them, and, still more conspicuously, by the reading of them in their public assemblies in all parts of the world ;) by a universal agreement with respect to these books, whilst doubts were entertained concerning some others; by contending sects appealing to them; by the early adversaries of the religion not disputing their genuineness, but, on the contrary, treating them as the depositaries of the history upon which the religion was founded; by many formal catalogues of these, as of certain and authoritative writings, published in different and distant parts of the Christian world; lastly, by the absence or defect of the above-cited topics of evidence, when applied to any other histories of the same subject. their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undertaken and undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct." Our second proposition, and which now remains to be treated of, is, " That there is not satisfactory evidence, that persons pretending to be original witnesses of any other similar miracles, have acted in the same manner, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts." These are strong arguments to prove, that the books actually proceeded from the authors whose names they bear, (and have always borne, for there is not a particle of evidence to show that they ever went under any other;) but the strict genuineness of the books is perhaps more than is necessary to the support of our proposition. For even supposing that, by reason of the silence of antiquity, or the loss of records, we know not who were the writers of the four Gospels, yet the fact, that they were received as authentic accounts of the transaction upon which the religion rested, and were received as such by Christians, at or near the age of the apostles, by those whom the apostles had taught, and by societies which apos- I ENTER upon this part of my argument, by tles had founded; this fact, I say, connected with declaring how far my belief in miraculous accounts the consideration, that they are corroborative of goes. If the reformers in the time of Wickliffe, each other's testimony, and that they are farther or of Luther; or those of England, in the time of corroborated by another contemporary history, Henry the Eighth, or of queen Mary; or the taking up the story where they had left it, and, in founders of our religious sects since, such as were a narrative built upon that story, accounting for Mr. Whitfield and Mr. Wesley in our own times; the rise and production of changes in the world, had undergone the life of toil and exertion, of the effects of which subsist at this day; connected, danger and sufferings, which we know that many moreover, with the confirmation which they re- of them did undergo, for a miraculous story; that ceive from letters written by the apostles them-is to say, if they had founded their public ministry selves, which both assume the same general story, upon the allegation of miracles wrought within and, as often as occasions lead them to do so, al- their own knowledge, and upon narratives which lude to particular parts of it; and connected also could not be resolved into delusion or mistake; with the reflection, that if the apostles delivered and if it had appeared, that their conduct really any different story, it is lost, (the present and no had its origin in these accounts, I should have other being referred to by a series of Christian believed them. Or, to borrow an instance which writers, down from their age to our own; being will be familiar to every one of my readers, if the likewise recognised in a variety of institutions, late Mr. Howard had undertaken his labours and which prevailed early and universally amongst the journeys in attestation, and in consequence of a disciples of the religion;) and that so great a clear and sensible miracle, I should have believed change, as the oblivion of one story and the sub-him also. Or, to represent the same thing under stitution of another, under such circumstances, could not have taken place; this evidence would be deemed, I apprehend, sufficient to prove concerning these books, that, whoever were the authors of them, they exhibit the story which the apostles told, and for which, consequently, they acted, and they suffered. If it be so, the religion must be true. These men could not be deceivers.-By only not bearing testimony, they might have avoided all these sufferings, and have lived quietly. Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw; assert facts which they had no knowledge of; go about lying to teach virtue; and, though not only convinced of Christ's being an impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity and hatred, danger and death? a third supposition; if Socrates had professed to perform public miracles at Athens; if the friends of Socrates, Phædo, Cebes, Crito, and Simmias, together with Plato, and many of his followers, relying upon the attestations which these miracles afforded to his pretensions, had, at the hazard of their lives, and the certain expense of their ease and tranquillity, gone about Greece, after his death, to publish and propagate his doctrines: and if these things had come to our knowledge, in the same way as that in which the life of Socrates is now transmitted to us, through the hands of his companions and disciples, that is, by writings received without doubt as theirs, from the age in which they were published to the present, I should have believed this likewise. And my belief would, in each case, be much strengthened, if the subject of the mission were of importance to the conduct and happiness of human life: if it testified any thing which it behoved mankind to know from such authority; if the nature of what it delivered, required the sort of proof which it alleged; if the occasion was adequate to the OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF interposition, the end worthy of the means. In CHRISTIANITY. PROPOSITION II. CHAPTER I. Our first proposition was, That there is satisfactory evidence that many, pretending to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed the last case, my faith would be much confirmed, if the effects of the transaction remained; more especially, if a change had been wrought, at the time, in the opinion and conduct of such numbers, as to lay the foundation of an institution, and of a system of doctrines, which had since overspread the greatest part of the civilized world. I should have believed. I say, the testimony in these cases; yet none of them do more than come up to the apostolic history. If any one choose to call assent to its evidence credulity, it is at least incumbent upon him to produce examples in which the same evidence hath turned out to be fallacious. And this contains the precise question which we are now to agitate. In stating the comparison between our evidence, and what our adversaries may bring into competition with ours, we will divide the distinctions which we wish to propose into two kinds,-those which relate to the proof, and those which relate to the miracles. Under the former head we may lay out the case. I. Such accounts of supernatural events as are found only in histories by some ages posterior to the transaction, and of which it is evident that the historian could know little more than his reader. Ours is contemporary history. This difference alone removes out of our way, the miraculous history of Pythagoras, who lived five hundred years before the Christian era, written by Porphyry and Jamblicus, who lived three hundred years after that era; the prodigies of Livy's history; the fables of the heroic ages; the whole of the Greek and Roman, as well as of the Gothic mythology; a great part of the legendary history of Popish saints, the very best attested of which is extracted from the certificates that are exhibited during the process of their canonization, a ceremony which seldom takes place till a century after their deaths. It applies also with considerable force to the miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, which are contained in a solitary history of his life, published by Philostratus, above a hundred years after his death; and in which, whether Philostratus had any prior account to guide him, depends upon his single unsupported assertion. Also to some of the miracles of the third century, especially to one extraordinary instance, the account of Gregory, bishop of Neocesarea, called Thaumaturgus, delivered in the writings of Gregory of Nyssen, who lived one hundred and thirty years after the subject of his panegyric. The value of this circumstance is shown to have been accurately exemplified in the history of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the order of Jesuits. His life, written by a companion of his, and by one of the order, was published about fifteen years after his death. In which life, the author, so far from ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, industriously states the reasons why he was not invested with any such power. The life was republished fifteen years afterward, with the addition of many circumstances which were the fruit, the author says, of farther inquiry, and of diligent examination; but still with a total silence about miracles. When Ignatius had been dead nearly sixty years, the Jesuits, conceiving a wish to have the founder of their order placed in the Roman calendar, began, as it should seem, for the first time, to attribute to him a catalogue of miracles, which could not then be distinctly disproved; and which there was, in those who governed the church, a strong disposition to admit upon the slenderest proofs. I1. We may lay out of the case, accounts published in one country, of what passed in a distant country, without any proof that such accounts were known or received at home. In the case of Christianity, Judea, which was the scene of the transaction, was the centre of the mission. The Douglas's Criterion of Miracles, p. 74. story was published in the place in which it was acted. The church of Christ was first planted at Jerusalem itself. With that church, others corresponded. From thence the primitive teachers of the institution went forth; thither they assembled. The church of Jerusalem, and the several churches of Judea, subsisted from the beginning, and for many ages;* received also the same books and the same accounts, as other churches did. This distinction disposes, amongst others, of the above-mentioned miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, most of which are related to have been performed in India; no evidence remaining that either the miracles ascribed to him, or the history of those miracles, were ever heard of in India. Those of Francis Xavier, the Indian missionary, with many others of the Romish breviary, are liable to the same objection, viz. that the accounts of them were published at a vast distance from the supposed scene of the wonders.† III. We lay out of the case transient rumours. Upon the first publication of an extraordinary account, or even of an article of ordinary intelligence, no one, who is not personally acquainted with the transaction, can know whether it be true or false, because any man may publish any story. It is in the future confirmation, or contradiction, of the account; in its permanency, or its disappearance; its dying away into silence, or its increasing in notoriety; its being followed up by subsequent accounts, and being repeated in different and independent accounts; that solid truth is distinguish ed from fugitive lies. This distinction is altogether on the side of Christianity. The story did not drop. On the contrary, it was succeeded by a train of action and events dependent upon it. The accounts, which we have in our hands, were composed after the first reports must have subsided. They were followed by a train of writings upon the subject. The historical testimonies of the transaction were many and various, and connected with letters, discourses, controversies, apologies, successively produced by the same transaction. IV. We may lay out of the case what I call naked history. It has been said, that if the prodigies of the Jewish history had been found only in fragments of Manetho, or Berosus, we should have paid no regard to them: and I am willing to admit this. If we knew nothing of the fact, but from the fragment; if we possessed no proof that these accounts had been credited and acted upon, from times, probably, as ancient as the accounts themselves; if we had no visible effects connected with the history, no subsequent or collateral testimony to confirm it; under these circumstances, I think that it would be undeserving of credit. But this certainly is not our case. In appreciating the evidence of Christianity, the books are to be combined with the institution; with the prevalency of the religion at this day; with the time and place of its origin; which are acknowledged points; with the circumstances of its rise and progress, as collected from external history; with the fact of our present books being received by the votaries of the institution from the beginning; with that of other books coming after these, filled *The succession of many eminent bishops of Jerusa lem in the first three centuries, is distinctly preserved; as Alexander, A. D. 212, who succeeded Narcissus, then with accounts of effects and consequences result- rest is involved, nothing is to be done or changed ing from the transaction, or referring to the trans-in consequence of believing them. Such stories action, or built upon it; lastly, with the consider are credited, if the careless assent that is given to ation of the number and variety of the books them deserve that name, more by the indolence of themselves, the different writers from which they the hearer, than by his judgment: or, though not proceed, the different views with which they were much credited, are passed from one to another written, so disagreeing as to repel the suspicion of without inquiry or resistance. To this case, and confederacy, so agreeing as to show that they were to this case alone, belongs what is called the love founded in a common original, i. e. in a story sub- of the marvellous. I have never known it carry stantially the same. Whether this proof be satis- men farther. Men do not suffer persecution from factory or not, it is properly a cumulation of evi- the love of the marvellous. Of the indifferent nadence, by no means a naked or solitary record. ture we are speaking of, are most vulgar errors and popular superstitions: most, for instance, of the current reports of apparitions. Nothing depends upon their being true or false. But not, surely, of this kind were the alleged miracles of Christ and his apostles. They decided, if true, the most important question upon which the human mind can fix its anxiety. They claimed to regulate the opinions of mankind, upon subjects in which they are not only deeply concerned, but usually refractory and obstinate. Men could not be utterly careless in such a case as this. If a Jew took up the story, he found his darling partiality to his own nation and law wounded; if a Gentile, he found his idolatry and polytheism reprobated and condemned. Whoever entertained the account, whether Jew or Gentile, could not avoid the following reflection:-"If these things be true, I must give up the opinions and principles in which I have been brought up, the religion in which my fathers lived and died." It is not conceivable that a man should do this upon any idle report or frivolous account, or indeed, without being fully satisfied and convinced of the truth and credibility of the narrative to which he trusted. But it did not stop at opinions. They who believed Christianity, acted upon it. Many made it the express business of their lives to publish the intelligence. It was required of those who admitted that intelligence, to change forthwith their conduct and their principles, to take up a differ ent course of life, to part with their habits and gratifications, and begin a new set of rules, and system of behaviour. The apostles, at least, were interested not to sacrifice their ease, their fortunes and their lives, for an idle tale; multitudes besides them were induced, by the same tale, to encounter opposition, danger, and sufferings. V. A mark of historical truth, although only in a certain way, and to a certain degree, is particularity, in names, dates, places, circumstances, and in the order of events preceding or following the transaction: of which kind, for instance, is the particularity in the description of Saint Paul's voyage and shipwreck, in the 27th chapter of the Acts, which no man, I think, can read without being convinced that the writer was there; and also in the account of the cure and examination of the blind man, in the ninth chapter of Saint John's Gospel, which bears every mark of personal knowledge on the part of the historian. I do not deny that fiction has often the particularity of truth; but then it is of studied and elaborate fiction, or of a formal attempt to deceive, that we observe this. Since, however, experience proves that particularity is not confined to truth, I have stated that it is a proof of truth only to a certain extent, i. e. it reduces the question to this, whether we can depend or not upon the probity of the relater? which is a considerable advance in our present argument; for an express attempt to deceive, in which case alone particularity can appear without truth, is charged upon the evangelists by few. If the historian acknowledge himself to have received his intelligence from others, the particularity of the narrative shows, prima facie, the accuracy of his inquiries, and the fulness of his information. This remark belongs to Saint Luke's history. Of the particularity which we allege, many examples may be found in all the Gospels. And it is very difficult to conceive, that such numerous particularities, as are almost every where to be met with in the Scriptures, should be raised out of nothing, or be spun out of the imagination without any fact to go upon.t It is to be remarked, however, that this particularity is only to be looked for in direct history. It is not natural in references or allusions, which yet, in other respects, often afford, as far as they go, the most unsuspicious evidence. VI. We lay out of the case such stories of supernatural events, as require, on the part of the hearer, nothing more than an otiose assent; stories upon which nothing depends, in which no inte *Both these chapters ought to be read for the sake of this very observation. "There is always some truth where there are considerable particularities related; and they always seem to bear some proportion to one another. Thus there is a great want of the particulars of time, place, and persons, in Manetho's account of the Egyptian Dynasties, Ctesias's of the Assyrian Kings, and those which the technical chronologers have given of the ancient king. doms of Greece: and agreeably thereto, the accounts have much fiction and falsehood, with some truth: whereas, Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and Cæsar's of the War in Gaul, in both which the particulars of time, place, and persons, are mentioned, are universally esteemed true to a great degree of exactness."-Hartley, vol. ii. p. 109. If it be said, that the mere promise of a future state would do all this; I answer, that the mere promise of a future state, without any evidence to give credit or assurance to it, would do nothing. A few wandering fishermen talking of a resurrection of the dead, could produce no effect. If it be farther said, that men easily believe what they anxiously desire; I again answer that, in my opinion, the very contrary of this is nearer to the truth. Anxiety of desire, earnestness of expectation, the vastness of an event, rather cause to disbelieve, to doubt, to dread a fallacy, to distrust, and to examine. When our Lord's resurrection was first reported to the apostles, they did not believe, we are told, for joy. This was natural, and is agreeable to experience. men VII. We have laid out of the case those accounts which require no more than a simple assent; and we now also lay out of the case those which come merely in affirmance of opinions already formed. This last circumstance is of the utmost importance to notice well. It has long been observed, that Popish miracles happen in 5 Popish countries; that they make no converts: | land, Calvin in France, or any of the reformers, which proves that stories are accepted, when they advance this plea?"* The French prophets, in fall in with principles already fixed, with the pub- the beginning of the present century, t ventured lic sentiments, or with the sentiments of a party to allege miraculous evidence, and immediately already engaged on the side the miracle supports, ruined their cause by their temerity. "Concernwhich would not be attempted to be produced in ing the religion of ancient Rome, of Turkey, the face of enemies, in opposition to reigning of Siam, of China, a single miracle cannot be tenets or favourite prejudices, or when, if they be named, that was ever offered as a test of any of believed, the belief must draw men away from those religions before their establishment." their preconceived and habitual opinions, from We may add to what has been observed of the their modes of life and rules of action. In the distinction which we are considering, that, where former case, men may not only receive a miracu- miracles are alleged merely in affirmance of a lous account, but may both act and suffer on the prior opinion, they who believe the doctrine may side and in the cause, which the miracle supports, sometimes propagate a belief of the miracles which yet not act or suffer for the miracle, but in pur- they do not themselves entertain. This is the suance of a prior persuasion. The miracle, like case of what are called pious frauds; but it is a any other argument which only confirms what case, I apprehend, which takes place solely in was before believed, is admitted with little ex- support of a persuasion already established. At amination. In the moral as in the natural world, least it does not hold of the apostolical history. If it is change which requires a cause. Men are the apostles did not believe the miracles, they did easily fortified in their old opinions, driven from not believe the religion; and, without this belief, them with great difficulty. Now how does this where was the piety, what place was there for any apply to the Christian history? The miracles, thing which could bear the name or colour of there recorded, were wrought in the midst of ene- piety, in publishing and attesting miracles in its mies, under a government, a priesthood, and a behalf? If it be said that any promote the belief magistracy, decidedly and vehemently adverse to of revelation, and of any accounts which favour them, and to the pretensions which they support- that belief, because they think them, whether well ed. They were Protestant miracles in a Popish or ill founded, of public and political utility; I country; they were Popish miracles in the midst answer, that if a character exist, which can with of Protestants. They produced a change; they less justice than another be ascribed to the founestablished a society upon the spot, adhering to ders of the Christian religion;it is that of politicians, the belief of them; they made converts; and those or of men capable of entertaining political views. who were converted gave up to the testimony The truth is, that there is no assignable character their most fixed opinions and most favourite pre- which will account for the conduct of the apostles, judices. They who acted and suffered in the supposing their story to be false. If bad men, cause, acted and suffered for the miracles: for what could have induced them to take such pains there was no anterior persuasion to induce them, to promote virtue? If good men, they would not no prior reverence, prejudice, or partiality, to take have gone about the country with a string of lies hold of Jesus had not one follower when he set in their mouths. up his claim. His miracles gave birth to his sect. No part of this description belongs to the ordinary evidence of Heathen or Popish miracles. Even most of the miracles alleged to have been performed by Christians, in the second and third century of its era, want this confirmation. It constitutes indeed a line of partition between the origin and the progress of Christianity. Frauds and fallacies might mix themselves with the progress, which could not possibly take place in the commencement of the religion; at least, according to any laws of human conduct that we are acquaint ed with. What should suggest to the first propalated in his life, written by Dr. Doddridge. All gators of Christianity, especially to fishermen, tax-gatherers, and husbandmen, such a thought as that of changing the religion of the world; what could bear them through the difficulties in which the attempt engaged them; what could procure any degree of success to the attempt; are questions which apply, with great force, to the setting out of the institution, with less, to every future stage of it. To hear some men talk, one would suppose the setting up of a religion by miracles to be a thing of every day's experience; whereas the whole current of history is against it. Hath any founder of a new sect amongst Christians pretended to miraculous powers, and succeeded by his pretensions? "Were these powers claimed or exercised by the founders of the sects of the Waldenses and Albigenses? Did Wickliffe in England pretend to it? Did Huss or Jerome in Bohemia? Did Luther in Germany, Zuinglius in Switzer IN APPRECIATING the credit of any miraculous story, these are distinctions which relate to the evidence. There are other distinctions, of great moment in the question, which relate to the miracles themselves. Of which latter kind the following ought carefully to be retained. I. It is not necessary to admit as a miracle, what can be resolved into a false perception. Of this nature was the demon of Socrates; the visions of Saint Anthony, and of many others; the vision which Lord Herbert of Cherbury describes himself to have seen; Colonel Gardner's vision, as re these may be accounted for by a momentary insanity; for the characteristic symptom of human madness is the rising up in the mind of images not distinguishable by the patient from impressions upon, the senses. The cases, however, in which the possibility of this delusion exists, are divided from the cases in which it does not exist, by many, and those not obscure marks. They are, for the most part, cases of visions or voices. The object is hardly ever touched. The vision submits not to be handled. One sense does not confirm another. They are likewise almost always cases of a solitary witness. It is in the highest degree improbable, and I know not, indeed, whether it hath ever been the fact, that the same derangement of the mental organs should seize Campbell on Miracles, p. 120. ed. 1766. |