newed fertility is not to be impaired by neglect, or destroyed by the ravages of war, serve only for the scene of a ferocious anarchy, or the supply of unceasing hostilities? Europe itself has known no religious wars for some centuries, yet has hardly ever been without war. Are the calamities, which at this day afflict it, to be imputed to Christianity? Hath Poland fallen by a Christian crusade? Hath the overthrow in France of civil order and security, been effected by the votaries of our religion, or by the foes? Amongst the awful lessons which the crimes and the miseries of that country afford to mankind, this is one : that, in order to be a persecutor, it is not necessary to be a bigot; that in rage and cruelty, in mischief and destruction, fanaticism itself can be outdone by infidelity.

Finally, If war, as it is now carried on between nations, produces less misery and ruin than formerly, we are indebted perhaps to Christianity for the change, more than to any other cause. Viewed therefore even in its relation to this subject, it appears to have been of advantage to the world. It hath humanized the conduct of wars: it hath ceased to excite them.

and suspense, that waiting and equilibrium of the judgment, which some require in religious mat ters, and which some would wish to be aimed at in the conduct of education, are impossible to be preserved. They are not given to the condition of human life.

It is a consequence of this institution that the doctrines of religion come to us before the proofs;, and come to us with that mixture of explications and inferences from which no public creed is, or can be, free. And the effect which too frequently follows, from Christianity being presented to the understanding in this form, is, that when any articles, which appear as parts of it, contradict the apprehension of the persons to whom it is proposed, men of rash and confident tempers hastily and indiscriminately reject the whole. But is this to do justice, either to themselves or to the religion? The rational way of treating a subject of such acknowledged importance is to attend, in the first place, to the general and substantial truth of its principles, and to that alone. When we once feel a foundation; when we once perceive a ground of credibility in its history, we shall proceed with safety to inquire into the interpretation of its records, and into the doctrines which have been deduced from them. Nor will it either endanger our faith, or diminish or alter our motives for obedience, if we should discover that these conclusions are formed with very different degrees of probability, and possess very different degrees of importance.

The differences of opinion, that have in all ages prevailed amongst Christians, fall very much within the alternative which has been stated. If we possessed the disposition which Christianity labours, above all other qualities to inculcate, these differences would do little harm. If that disposition be wanting, other causes, even were these absent, would continually rise up to call forth This conduct of the understanding, dictated by the malevolent passions into action. Differences every rule of right reasoning, will uphold personal of opinions, when accompanied with mutual cha- Christianity, even in those countries in which it rity, which Christianity forbids them to violate, is established under forms the most liable to diffiare for the most part innocent, and for some pur-culty and objection. It will also have the farther poses useful. They promote inquiry, discussion, effect of guarding us against the prejudices which and knowledge. They help to keep up an atten- are wont to arise in our minds to the disadvan tion to religious subjects, and a concern about tage of religion, from observing the numerous conthem, which might be apt to die away in the calm troversies which are carried on amongst its proand silence of universal agreement. I do not fessors, and likewise of inducing a spirit of lenity know that it is in any degree true, that the influ- and moderation in our judgment, as well as in our ence of religion is the greatest, where there are treatment of those who stand, in such controver the fewest dissenters. sies, upon sides opposite to ours. What is clear in Christianity, we shall find to be sufficient, and to be infinitely valuable; what is dubious, unne cessary to be decided, or of very subordinate importance; and what is most obscure, will teach us to bear with the opinions which others may have formed upon the same subject. We shall say to those who the most widely dissent from us, what Augustine said to the worst heretics of his age: "Illi in vos sæviant, qui nesciunt, cum quo labore verum inveniatur, et quàm difficilè caveantur errores;-qui nesciunt, cum quantâ difficultate sanetur oculus interioris hominis;-qui nesciunt, quibus suspiriis et gemitibus fiat ut ex quantulacunque parte possit intelligi Deus."*

CHAPTER VIII.

The Conclusion.

IN religion, as in every other subject of human reasoning, much depends upon the order in which we dispose our inquiries. A man who takes up a system of divinity with a previous opinion that either every part must be true, or the whole false, approaches the discussion with great disadvantage. No other system, which is founded upon moral evidence, would bear to be treated in the same A judgment, moreover, which is once pretty manner. Nevertheless, in a certain degree, we well satisfied of the general truth of the religion, are all introduced to our religious studies, under will not only thus discriminate in its doctrines, this prejudication. And it cannot be avoided. but will possess sufficient strength to overcome The weakness of the human judgment in the the reluctance of the imagination to admit articles early part of youth, yet its extreme susceptibility of faith which are attended with difficulty of apof impression, renders it necessary to furnish it prehension, if such articles of faith appear to be with some opinions, and with some principles or truly parts of the revelation. It was to be expectother. Or indeed, without much express care, ored beforehand, that what related to the economy, much endeavour for this purpose, the tendency of the mind of man to assimilate itself to the habits of thinking and speaking which prevails around him, produces the same effect. That indifferency

and to the persons, of the invisible world, which revelation professes to do, and which, if true, it

* Aug. contra Ep. Fund. cap. ii. n. 2, 3.

actually does, should contain some points remote | concur in representing these facts in this manner. from our analogies, and from the comprehension of a mind which hath acquired all its ideas from sense and from experience.

It hath been my care, in the preceding work, to preserve the separation between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as I could; to remove from the primary question all considerations which have been unnecessarily joined with it; and to offer a defence to Christianity, which every Christian might read, without seeing the tenets in which he had been brought up attacked or decried: and it always afforded a satisfaction to my mind to observe that this was practicable; that few or none of our many controversies with one another affect or relate to the proofs of our religion; that the rent never descends to the foundation.

A religion, which now possesses the greatest part of the civilized world, unquestionably sprang up at Jerusalem at this time. Some account must be given of its origin; some cause assigned for its rise. All the accounts of this origin, all the ex plications of this cause, whether taken from the writings of the early followers of the religion (in which, and in which perhaps alone, could be expected that they should be distinctly unfolded,) or from occasional notices in other writings of that or the adjoining age, either expressly allege the facts above stated as the means by which the religion was set up, or advert to its commencement in a manner which agrees with the supposition of these facts being true, and which testifies their operation and effects.

stronger proofs than belong to almost any other ancient book whatever, and by proofs which widely distinguish them from any others claiming a similar authority to theirs. If there were any good reason for doubt concerning the names to which these books are ascribed, (which there is not, for they were never ascribed to any other, and we have evidence not long after their publication of their bearing the names which they now bear,) their antiquity, of which there is no question, their reputation and authority amongst the early disciples of the religion, of which there is as little, form a valid proof that they must, in the main at least, have agreed with what the first teachers of the religion delivered.

The truth of Christianity depends upon its These propositions alone lay a foundation for leading facts, and upon them alone. Now of these our faith; for they prove the existence of a transwe have evidence which ought to satisfy us, at action, which cannot even in its most general least until it appear that mankind have ever been parts be accounted for, upon any reasonable sup deceived by the same. We have some uncontest-position, except that of the truth of the mission. ed and incontestable points, to which the history But the particulars, the detail of the miracles or of the human species have nothing similar to offer. miraculous pretences (for such there necessarily A Jewish peasant changed the religion of the must have been,) upon which this unexampled world, and that, without force, without power, transaction rested, and for which these men acted without support; without one natural source, or and suffered as they did act and suffer, it is uncircumstance of attraction, influence, or success. doubtedly of great importance to us to know. We Such a thing hath not happened in any other in- have this detail from the fountain-head, from the stance. The companions of this Person, after he persons themselves; in accounts written by eyehimself had been put to death for his attempt, as- witnesses of the scene, by contemporaries and serted his supernatural character, founded upon companions of those who were so; not in one his supernatural operations: and, in testimony of book, but four, each containing enough for the the truth of their assertions, i. e. in consequence verification of the religion, all agreeing in the funof their own belief of that truth, and in order to damental parts of the history. We have the aucommunicate their knowledge of it to others, vo-thenticity of these books established, by more and luntarily entered upon lives of toil and hardship, and with a full experience of their danger, committed themselves to the last extremities of persecution. This hath not a parallel. More particularly, a very few days after this Person had been publicly executed, and in the very city in which he was buried, these his companions declared with one voice that his body was restored to life; that they had seen him, handled him, ate with him; conversed with him; and, in pursuance of their persuasion of the truth of what they told, preached his religion, with this strange fact as the foundation of it, in the face of those who had killed him, who were armed with the power of the country, and necessarily and naturally disposed to treat his followers as they had treated himself; and having done this upon the spot where the event took place, carried the intelligence of it abroad, in despite of difficulties and opposition, and where the nature of their errand gave them nothing to expect but derision, insult, and outrage. -This is without example. These three facts, I think, are certain, and would have been nearly so, if the Gospels had never been written. The Christian story, as to these points, hath never varied. No other hath been set up against it. Every letter, every discourse, every controversy, amongst the followers of the religion; every book written by them, from the age of its commencement to the present time, in every part of the world in which it hath been professed, and with every sect into which it hath been divided (and we have letters and discourses written by contemporaries, by witnesses of the transaction, by persons themselves hearing a share in it, and other writings following that age in regular succession,)

When we open these ancient volumes, we discover in them marks of truth, whether we consider each in itself, or collate them with one another. The writers certainly knew something of what they were writing about, for they manifest an acquaintance with local circumstances, with the history and usages of the times, which could only belong to an inhabitant of that country, living in that age. In every narrative we perceive simplicity and undesignedness; the air and the language of reality. When we compare the different narra tives together, we find them so varying as to repel all suspicion of confederacy; so agreeing under this variety, as to show that the accounts had one real transaction for their common foundation; often attributing different actions and discourses to the person whose history, or rather memoirs of whose history, they profess to relate, yet actions and discourses so similar, as very much to bespeak the same character; which is a coincidence, that, in such writers as they were, could only be the

prejudices, nor flattering popular notions, nor ex- | very forcibly, will be found, I think, upon refleccusing established practices, but calculated, in the tion, to reside more in our habits of apprehension, matter of its instruction, truly to promote human than in the subject; and that the giving way to happiness, and in the form in which it was con-it, when we have any reasonable grounds for the veyed, to produce impression and effect; a morality, contrary, is rather an indulging of the imaginawhich, let it have proceeded from any person tion, than any thing else. Abstractedly considerwhatever, would have been satisfactory evidence ed, that is, considered without relation to the difof his good sense and integrity, of the soundness ference which habit, and merely habit, produces of his understanding and the probity of his designs; in our faculties and modes of apprehension, I do a morality, in every view of it, much more perfect not see any thing more in the resurrection of a than could have been expected from the natural. dead man, than in the conception of a child; circumstances and character of the person who except it be this, that the one comes into his world delivered it; a morality, in a word, which is, and with a system of prior consciousnesses about him, hath been, most beneficial to mankind. which the other does not: and no person will say, that he knows enough of either subject to perceive, that this circumstance makes such a difference in the two cases, that the one should be easy, and the other impossible; the one natural, the other not so. To the first man, the succession of the species would be as incomprehensible, as the resurrection of the dead is to us.

Upon the greatest, therefore, of all possible occasions, and for a purpose of inestimable value, it pleased the Deity to vouchsafe a miraculous attestation. Having done this for the institution, when this alone could fix its authority, or give to it a beginning, he committed its future progress to the natural means of human communication, and to the influence of those causes by which human Thought is different from motion, perception conduct and human affairs are governed. The from impact: the individuality of a mind is hardly seed, being sown, was left to vegetate; the leaven, consistent with the divisibility of an extended being inserted, was left to ferment; and both ac- substance; or its volition, that is, its power of cording to the laws of nature: laws, nevertheless, originating motion, with the inertness which disposed and controlled by that Providence which cleaves to every portion of matter which our obconducts the affairs of the universe, though by an servation or our experiments can reach. These influence inscrutable, and generally undistinguish-distinctions lead us to an immaterial principle: able by us. And in this Christianity is analogous to most other provisions for happiness. The provision is made; and, being made, is left to act according to laws, which, forming a part of a more general system, regulate this particular subject, in common with many others.

at least, they do this; they so negative the mechanical properties of matter, in the constitution of a sentient, still more of a rational being, that no argument drawn from these properties, can be of any great weight in opposition to other reasons, when the question respects the changes of which Let the constant recurrence to our observation such a nature is capable, or the manner in which of contrivance, design, and wisdom, in the works these changes are effected. Whatever thought of nature, once fix upon our minds the belief of a be, or whatever it depend upon, the regular expeGod, and after that all is easy. In the counsels rience of sleep makes one thing concerning it cerof a being possessed of the power and disposition|tain, that it can be completely suspended, and which the Creator of the universe must possess, it completely restored. is not improbable that there should be a future If any one find it too great a strain upon his state; it is not improbable that we should be ac- thoughts, to admit the notion of a substance quainted with it. A future state rectifies every strictly immaterial, that is, from which extension thing: because, if moral agents be made, in the and solidity are excluded, he can find no difficulty last event, happy or miserable, according to their in allowing that a particle as small as a particle conduct in the stations and under the circum- of light, minuter than all conceivable dimensions, stances in which they are placed, it seems not may just as easily be the depositary, the organ, very material by the operation of what causes, and the vehicle, of consciousness, as the conge according to what rules, or even, if you please to ries of animal substance which forms a human call it so, by what chance or caprice, these stations body, or the human brain; that, being so, it may are assigned, or these circumstances determined. transfer a proper identity to whatever shall hereThis hypothesis, therefore, solves all that objec-after be united to it; may be safe amidst the detion to the divine care and goodness, which the struction of its integuments; may connect the promiscuous distribution of good and evil (I do natural with the spiritual, the corruptible with not mean in the doubtful advantages of riches the glorified body. If it be said, that the mode and grandeur, but in the unquestionably import- and means of all this is imperceptible by our ant distinctions of health and sickness, strength senses, it is only what is true of the most importand infirmity, bodily ease and pain, mental ala-ant agencies and operations. The great powers crity and depression) is apt on so many occasions to create. This one truth changes the nature of things; gives order to confusion; makes the moral world of a piece with the natural.

Nevertheless, a higher degree of assurance than that to which it is possible to advance this, or any argument drawn from the light of nature, was necessary, especially to overcome the shock which the imagination and the senses receive from the effects and the appearances of death, and the obstruction which thence arises to the expectation of either a continued or a future existence. This difficulty, although of a nature, no doubt, to act

of nature are all invisible. Gravitation, electricity, magnetism, though constantly present, and constantly exerting their influence; though within us, near us, and about us; though diffused throughout all space, overspreading the surface, or penetrating the contexture, of all bodies with which we are acquainted, depend upon substances and actions which are totally concealed from our senses. The Supreme Intelligence is so himself.

But whether these or any other attempts to satisfy the imagination, bear any resemblance to the truth, or whether the imagination, which, as I have said before, is a mere slave of habit, can be