the supposition of collusion; but it is what might have been expected from the testimony of several honest and independent witnesses, who spoke what they had seen and heard.

20. When then we consider the first teachers of Christianity in the character of witnesses, bearing testimony to facts which had come under their own observation, we are bound to regard the sufferings to which they submitted, in this character, as giving great weight to their testimony. When, in ordinary cases, the witnesses of a matter of fact are numerous, and when there is an entire though not a preconcerted agreement in their statements, their evidence is justly viewed as conclusive. The witnesses of the facts recorded in the New Testament were not only numerous and concurring, but an adherence to their testimony subjected them to great sacrifices; it was given in circumstances which would have deterred them had they been doubtful of its truth; it was announced with the same solemnity and unhesitating firmness before the tribunal of the Jew and the Greek,-in the hamlet of barbarians, and in the seat of philosophy; and during a long course of calumny and persecution, in which they suffered the loss of all things but the satisfaction of a good conscience, they gave the same report of that which they had seen, and the same account of the object of their mission. According to their own statement, they "approved themselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by love unfeigned." Had their course of trial been less severe, their testimony, though in itself equally true, would not have been transmitted to posterity, accompanied with such superabounding proofs of indubitable truth.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES PROVED BY CONTINUOUS TESTIL MONY: CHRISTIAN WRITERS.-COMMEMORATIVE INSTITU TIONS. THE CHURCH.

1. WE formerly showed, when proving the authenticity of the New Testament, that the incidental allusions by the evangelists to the facts which lay within the scene and the time of their narrative, are fully confirmed by the minute history given of his country during this period by the Jewish historian Josephus. In addition to other facts of the sacred narrative, the early diffusion of Christianity, that it was embraced by great multitudes, and that its disciples were subjected to extreme sufferings, are attested by Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny. But in attesting these facts, these distinguished heathen writers must be regarded as bearing testimony, indirectly, to the miraculous character of the Christian religion.

2. The companions of the original witnesses, the five apostolic fathers, bear testimony to the truth of the New Testament, by quotations from it, and references to it; and thus virtually bear testimony to the miracles recorded in it. Their object, indeed, was not to give a narrative of these miracles. This had been done already by four different authors, who possessed every desirable -qualification for the task; and the most appropriate way in which they could express their firm belief in the mighty works of Christ, was to express their faith in those authentic records which were received by the Christian world. This, accordingly, they have done. To have written another gospel could have answered no valuable purpose whatever. The explicit testimony which they would have thereby borne to the miracles of our Lord, they have given in a mode still more impressive, by ap..

pending their solemn declaration of reverence for, and belief in, the accounts which were set forth by the apostles. They, however, do still more than this. They all refer to the chief of the Christian miracles, the resurrection of our Lord, the fact on which Christianity rests.

3. Clement, whose name is mentioned in the New Testament, and who is one of the apostolic fathers, speaks of the resurrection of Christ in his epistle to the Church at Corinth. "Let us consider," says he, "beloved, how the Lord does continually show us, that there shall be a resurrection; of which he has made the Lord Jesus Christ the first fruits, having raised him from the dead." The testimony thus borne to the greatest of all miracles is virtually the attestation of Clement to all the other miracles of our Lord. Ignatius, another of the apostolic fathers, and who was bishop, in the first century, of the church of Antioch in Syria, certifies the same great fact. "After his resurrection (the resurrection of Christ) he did eat and drink with them :"-alluding to the passage in the Acts of the Apostles, in which it is said, that his disciples did eat and drink with him after he arose from the dead (x. 41). Polycarp also, the companion of the apostles, and bishop of Smyrna, says in reference to this great event," Who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in his Father, who raised him from the dead; having believed in Him that raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and gave him glory, and a seat at his right hand; to whom all things are made subject, that are in heaven and that are in earth, whom every living creature serves." I shall only add an extract from a letter of Irenæus, respecting the venerable Polycarp, preserved by Eusebius." I saw you," says he, addressing Florinus, "when I was very young, in the Lower Asia, with Polycarp. For I better remember the affairs of that time than those which have lately happened; the things which we learn in our childhood growing up in the soul, and uniting themselves to it. Insomuch that I can tell the place

in which the blessed Polycarp sat and taught, and his going out, and coming in, and the manner of his life, and the form of his person, and his discourses to the people; and how he related his conversation with John, and others who had seen the Lord; and how he related their sayings, and what he had heard from them concerning the Lord, both concerning his miracles and his doctrines, as he had received them from the eyewitnesses of the Word of Life; all which Polycarp related agreeably to the Scriptures."

4. In addition to the written testimony from the apostolic age downwards, we have the unwritten testimony implied in the consent of the multitudes who embraced Christianity to the truth of the gospel. The continued and uninterrupted existence of the Christian community, or church, in every age to the present, affords powerful evidence of the reality of the miraculous facts on which Christianity is founded. The unbeliever who maintains the impossibility of converting heathen nations now to Christianity without the aid of miracles, is bound to account for the way in which so many myriads in the heathen world were converted to the Christian faith in the Augustan age of Rome, should he deny the miracles of the New Testament. The account which is given in that Book of the origin of the Christian church in all the nations of the earth is credible; the miracles which were wrought, and the agency which was employed, were, as all must admit, adequate to the production of the most astonishing revolution that has ever taken place on the earth,-a revolution which was effected at a period of the world, and in cities and nations, in which there were numbers distinguished by their learning and eloquence, in which philosophers of all sects taught the doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus. It was during this period, so remarkable in the history of the world, that the revolution to which I refer was accomplished, extraordinary in its character, its extent, its permanency, the

instruments employed in effecting it, its influence on the happiness, domestic and social, of the human race, the institutions, civil and religious, which have arisen from it, the number and magnitude of the effects which have resulted, and which are to result from it. Men of all ranks, and multitudes of all nations, were turned from the pollutions of paganism, to the knowledge of the only true God, to the faith of Christ as the only Saviour, and to the practice of all the duties and virtues which Christianity inculcates. The causes which are assigned in the New Testament are those only which could produce such effects. The existence of the church, therefore, from the period in question until now, is a standing memorial of the reality of those miracles from which the church derived its origin.

5. The same facts are attested by commemorative institutions, which have been observed from the apostolic age until now. We formerly applied the argument in Leslie's Short Method with the Deists, in reference to the miracles by which the divine mission of Moses was attested. It is equally applicable to the Christian miracles. Baptism and the Lord's Supper were instituted as perpetual memorials of these mighty works; and they were instituted at the very time when these things were said to be done; and they have been observed without interruption in all ages through the whole Christian world, down all the way from that time to this. The last of these institutions is commemorative not only of our Lord's death, but of his resurrection: his disciples were enjoined to do this till he come again. Thus we have a standing memorial of this great miracle, instituted at the very time when it took place, and observed from that time to the present day. We are thus furnished with various evidences, all uniting in bearing attestation to the reality of the gospel miracles, and consequently in establishing the truth and divine authority of Christianity.

6. Infidels, with the view of weakening the evidence,