would have thought it an abject declaration | tion, the restraining power of Divine grace from the lips of a great teacher, unless they is still too frequently resisted,-if the offered had understood that grand paradox of Chris-light of the Holy Spirit is still too frequently tianity, that lowliness of heart was among quenched, what must have been the state of the highest attainments to be made by a ra- mankind, when that grace was not made tional creature. known, when that light was not fully revealed, when 'darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people?" But under the clear illumination of evangelical truth, every precept becomes a principle, every argument a motive, every direction a duty, every doctrine a law; and why? Because thus saith the Lord.

When they had heard the beginning of that animating interrogation,-Where is the wise? Where is the disputer of this world? methinks I behold the whole portico and academy emulously rush forward at an invitation so alluring, at a challenge so personal; but how instinctively would they have shrunk back at the repulsive question which Christianity, however, is not merely a resucceeds;-Hath not God made foolish the ligion of authority; the soundest reason emwisdom of this world? Yet would not Chris- braces most confidently what the most explitianity, well understood and faithfully re-cit revelation has taught, and the deepest ceived, have taught these exalted spirits, inquirer is usually the most convinced Christhat, to look down upon what is humanly tian. The reason of philosophy, is a dispugreat, is a loftier attainment than to look up

to it?

Would it not have carried a sentiment to the heart of Alexander, a system to the mind of Aristotle, which their respective, though differently pursued, careers of ambition utterly failed of furnishing to either?

ting reason, that of Christianity, an obeying reason. The glory of the pagan religion consisted in virtuous sentiments, the glory of the Christian in the pardon and the subjugation of sin. The humble Christian may say with one of the ancient Fathers,-I will not glory because I am righteous, but because I am redeemed.

CHAP. II.

Reason, even by those who possessed it in the highest perfection, as it gave no adequate view even of natural religion, so it made no adequate provision for correct morals. The attempt appears to have been above the reach of human powers. God manifested On the Historical writers of the New Tes in the flesh,-He who was not only true, but THE TRUTH, and who taught the truth as

tament.

AMONG the innumerable evidences of the

one having authority,'-was alone compe- truth of Christianity, there is one of so rare tent to this great work. The duty of sub- and extraordinary a nature, as might of itself mission to Divine Power was to the multi-suffice to carry conviction to the mind of evtude more intelligible, than the intricate de-ery unprejudiced inquirer, even if this proof ductions of reason. That God is, and is a were not accompanied by such a cloud of rewarder of them that seek him; that Jesus concurring testimonies. Christ came into the world to save sinners, make a compendious summary both of natural and revealed religion; they are propositions which carry their own explanation, disentangled from those trains of argument, which, as few could have been brought to comprehend, perhaps it was the greatest wisdom in the philosopher never to have proposed them.

The sacred volume is composed by a vast variety of writers, men of every different rank and condition, of every diversity of character and turn of mind: the monarch and the plebeian, the illiterate and the learned, the foremost in talent and the moderately gifted in natural advantages, the historian and the legislator, the orator and the poet,— each had his immediate vocation, each his The most skilful dialectician could only peculiar province: some prophets, some reason on known principles; but without apostles, some evangelists, living in ages rethe superinduction of revealed religion, he mote from each other, under different modes could only, with all his efforts, and they have of civil government, under different dispenbeen prodigious, furnish rules,' but not sations of the Divine economy, filling a peri'arms.' Logic is indeed a powerful weapon od of time which reached from the first dawn to fence, but not to fight with; that which of heavenly light to its meridian radiance. is a conqueror in the schools is impotent in The Old Testament and the New, the law the field. It is powerful to refute a sophism, and the gospel; the prophets predicting but weak to repel a temptation. It may de- events, and the evangelists recording them; feat an opponent made up like itself of pure the doctrinal yet didactic epistolary writers, intellect; but is no match for so substantial and he who closed the Sacred Canon in the an assailant as moral evil. It yields to the apocalyptic vision;-all these furnished their onset, when the antagonists are furious pas-respective portions, and yet all tally with a sions and headstrong appetites. It can make dove-tailed correspondence; all the differa successful thrust against an opinion, but is ent materials are joined with a completeness too feeble to pull down the strong holds of the most satisfactory, with an agreement sin and Satan. the most incontrovertible.

If, through the strength of human corrup

This instance of uniformity without de

sign, of agreement without contrivance; this treasuring up more of his discourses; some consistency maintained through a long se- particularizing the circumstances of his ries of ages, without a possibility of the or- birth; others only refering to it as a fact dinary methods for conducting such a plan; not requiring fresh authentication; another these unparalleled congruities, these unex-again plainly adverting to it by 'the WORD ampled coincidences, form altogether a spe- that was made flesh, and dwelt among us;' cies of evidence, of which there is no other and adding a new circumstance by citing the instance in the history of all the other books testimony of the Baptist to the Lamb of in the world. God, that taketh away the sin of the world;' All these variously gifted writers here enu--in short, had there been in the several remerated, concur in this grand peculiarity, lations not mere consistency, but positive that all have the same end in view, all are identity, then, not only the fidelity of the pointing to the same object, all, without any writers would have been questionable, and projected collusion, are advancing the same concert and design justly have been suspectscheme; each brings in his several contin- ed, but we should in effect have had only gent, without any apparent consideration the testimony of one Gospel instead of how it may unite with the portions brought four. by other contributors, without any spirit of But to pass to other evidences of truth.accommodation, without any visible inten- The manner in which these writers speak of tion to make out a case, without indeed any themselves, is at once a proof of their humiactual resemblance, more than that every lity and of their veracity. The conversion separate portion being derived from the of Saint Matthew is slightly related by himsame spring, each must be governed by one self and in the most modest terms. He simcommon principle, and that principle being ply says, speaking in the third person; 'JeTruth itself, must naturally and consentane- sus saw a man named Matthew, and saith ously produce assimilation, conformity, unto him, Follow me: and he arose and folagreement. What can we conclude from all lowed him and as Jesus sat at meat in the this, but what is indeed the inevitable con- house, many publicans and sinners came and clusion, a conclusion which forces itself on sat down with him.** Not a word is said of the mind, and compels the submission of a sacrifice so honourable to himself, and so the understanding; that all this, under dif- generously recorded by Saint Luke in those ferences of administration, is the work of one words, he left all, and followed him; not a and the same great, Omniscient, and Eter-word of the situation he renounced at the nal Spirit.

:

first call of the Master, and which appears to have been lucrative from the great feast he made for him in his own house, and the great company of publicans and others who sat down with him.' Saint Luke relates only his hospitality; Saint Matthew, as if to abase himself the more, describes only the sinners which made up his society previous to his conversion.

If, however, from the general uniformity of plan visible, throughout the whole Sacred Canon, results one of the most cogent and complete arguments for its Divine original, others will also rise from its mode of execution, its peculiar diversities, and some other circumstances attending it, not so easily brought under one single point of view. Does it not look as if Almighty Wisdom re- These sober recorders of events the most fused to divide the glory of his revelation astonishing, are never carried away, by the with man, when, passing by the shining circumstances they relate, into any pomp of lights of the pagan world, He chose, in the diction, into any use of superlatives. There promulgation of the Gospel, to make use of is not, perhaps, in the whole Gospel a single men of ordinary endowments, men posses- interjection, nor an exclamation, not any arsing the usual defects and prejudices of per- tifice to call the reader's attention to the sons so educated and so circumstanced? Not marvels of which the relaters were the witonly the other immediate followers, but even nesses. Absorbed in their holy task, no the biographers of Christ, were persons of no alien idea presents itself to their mind: the distinguished abilities. Integrity was almost object before them fills it. They never ditheir sole, as it were the most requisite qua- gress, are never called away by the solicitalification. On this point it is not too much tions of vanity, or the suggestions of curiosito maintain, that the writings of each of ty. No image starts up to divert their atthese men are not only so consistent with tention. There is indeed, in the Gospels, each other, but also with themselves, as to much imagery, much allusion, much allegooffer, individually, as well as aggregately, a ry, but they proceed from their Lord, and proof of their own veracity, as well as of the are recorded as his. The writers never fill truth itself. up the intervals between events. They Had they, however, all recorded uniform-leave circumstances to make their own imly the same more inconsiderable particu- pression, instead of helping out the reader lars; had there not been that natural diver-by any reflections of their own. They alsity, that incidental variation, observable in ways feel the holy ground on which they all other historians ;-had not one preserved stand. They preserve the gravity of histopassages which the others overlooked, some ry and the severity of truth, without enrecording more of the actions of Jesus, others * Matthew, ch. 9. + St. Luke, ch. 5.

VOL. II.

32

larging the outline or swelling the expres-so seen in Israel.' Again, it was the officers, sion. not the writer, who said, 'never man spake The Evangelists all agree in this most une-like this man.' quivocal character of veracity, that of crimi- In recording the most stupendous events, nating themselves. They record their own we are never called to an exhibition of their errors and offences with the same simplicity own pity, or their own admiration. In relawith which they relate the miracles and suf-ting the most soul-moving circumstance, ferings of their Lord. Indeed their dulness, there is no attempt to be pathetic, no aim to mistakes and failings are so intimately work up the feelings of the reader, no appeal blended with his history, by their continual to his sympathy, no studied finish, no elabodemands upon his patience and forbearance, rate excitement. Jesus wept;-no comas to make no inconsiderable or unimpor-ment. He is hungry;-no compassion estant part of it. capes them. He is transfigured;-no ex

This fidelity is equally amiable both in the pression of astonishment. He is agonized; composition, and in the preservation of the the narrative does not rise in emphasis. Old Testament, a book which every where He is betrayed;-no execration to the betestifies against those whose history it con-trayer. He is condemned;—no animadvertains, and not seldom against the relators sions on the iniquitous judge; while their themselves. The author of the Pentateuch own denial and desertion are faithfully reproclaims, in the most pointed terms, the in-corded. He expires;-no remark on the gratitude of the chosen people towards God. tremendous catastrophe, no display of their He prophesies that they will go on filling up own sorrow. Facts alone supply the void; the measure of their offences, calls heaven and what facts? The earth quakes, the sun and earth to witness against them that he has is eclipsed, the graves give up their dead. delivered his own soul, declares that as they In such a history, it is very true, fidelity was have worshipped gods which were no gods, praise, fact was glory. And yet, if, on the God will punish them by callingfa people one hand, there were no need of the rhetoriwho were no people. Yet this book, so dis-cian's art to embellish the tale, what mere graceful to their national character, this re- rhetoricians could have abstained from using gister of their own offences, they would ra- it?

ther die than lose. This,' says the admira- Thus, it seems obvious, that unlettered ble Pascal, 'is an instance of integrity which men were appointed to this great work, in has no example in the world, no root in na-order that the success of the Gospel might ture. In the Pentateuch and the Gospel, not be suspected of owing any thing to natherefore, these parallel, these unequalled tural ability, or to splendid attainment. instances of sincerity, are incontrovertible proofs of the truth of both.

This arrangement, while it proves the astonishing progress of Christianity to have It is obvious that the impression which was been caused by its own energy, serves to reto be made should owe nothing to the skill, move every just suspicion of the contrivance but every thing to the veracity of the writers. of fraud, the collusions of interest, or the arThey never tried to improve upon the doc-tifices of invention. trines or the requirements of their Master, Had the first apostles been men of genius, by mixing their own wisdom with them. they might have injured the purity of the Though their views were not clear, their Gospel by bringing their ingenuity into it.— obedience was implicit. It was not, howev-Had they been men of learning, they might er, a mere mechanical obedience, but an un-have imported from the schools of Grecce disputing submission to the Divine teaching. and Rome, each from his own sect, some of Even at the glorious scene of the Transfi- its peculiar infusions, and thus have vitiated guration, their amazement did not get the the simplicity of the Gospel. Had they been better of their fidelity. There was no vain critics and philosophers, there might have impatience to disclose the wonders which had been endless debates which part of Chrispassed, and of which they had been allowed tianity was the power of God, and which the honour of being witnesses. Though the result of man's wisdom. Thus, though they inserted it afterwards in their narra-corruptions soon crept into the church, yet tions, they, as they were commanded, kept no impurities could reach the Gospel itself. it close, and told no man in those days what Some of its teachers became heretical, but they had seen.' the pure word remained unadulterated

The simplicity of the narrative is never However, the philosophizing or the Judaizing violated; there is even no panegyric on the teachers might subsequently infuse their own august person they commemorate, not a sin-errors into their own preaching, the Gospel gle epithet of commendation. When they preserved its own integrity. They might mention an extraordinary effect of his divine mislead their followers, but they could not eloquence, it is history, not eulogy, that deteriorate the New Testament. speaks. They say nothing of their own ad- It required different gifts to promulgate miration; it is the people who were asto- and to maintain Christianity. The Evannished at the gracious words which proceed-gelists did not so much attempt to argue the ed out of his mouth.' Again, it was the truth of the Redeemer's doctrines, as pracmultitudes marvelled, saying, it was never | tically to prove that they were of Divine

origin. If called on for a defence, they and a most suitable, though subordinate acworked a miracle. If they could not pro-cessory in maintaining the cause of that duce a cogent argument, they could produce Divine truth which it had no hand in estaa paralytic walking. If they could not open blishing. the eyes of the prejudiced, they could open the eyes of the blind. Such attestation was to the eye-witnesses, argument the most unanswerable. The most illiterate persons could judge of this species of evidence so peculiar to Christianity. He could know whether he saw a sick man restored to life by a word, or a lame man take up his bed and walk, or one who had been dead four days, instantly obey the call-'Lazarus, come forth! About a sentiment there might be a diversity of suffrages; about an action which all saw, all could entertain but one opinion. The caviller might have refuted a syllogism, and a fallacy might have imposed on the multitude, but no sophistry could counteract occular demonstration.

The ministry of Paul was not to be circumscribed, as that of his immediate precursors had been, by the narrow limits of the Jewish church. As he was designated to be the Apostle of the Gentiles, as he was to bear his testimony before rulers and scholars; as he was to carry his mission into the presence of 'kings, and not to be ashamed,'-it pleased Infinite Wisdom, which always fits the instrument to the work, and the talent to the exigence, to accommodate most exactly the endowments of Paul to the demands that would be made upon them; and as Divine Providence caused Moses to acquire in Egypt the learning which was to prepare him for the legislator of a people so differently circumstanced, it pleased the same Infinite Wisdom to convey to Paul, through the mouth of a Jewish teacher, the knowledge he was to employ for the Gentiles, and to adapt his varied acquirements to the various ranks, characters, prejudices, and local circumstances of those before whom he was to advocate the noblest cause ever assigned to man.

But as God does nothing in vain, so he never employs irrelevant instruments or superfluous means. He therefore did not see fit to be at the expense of a perpetual miracle to maintain and carry on that church which he had thought proper to establish by miraculous powers. When, therefore, the Gospel was immutably fixed on its own eternal basis, and its truth unimpeachably set- Of all these providential advantages he tled by the authentic testimony of so many availed himself with a wisdom, aptness, and eye witnesses to the life, death, and resur-appropriateness, without a parallel;—a wisrection of Jesus; a writer was brought for- dom derived from that Divine Spirit which ward, contemporary, but not connected, guided all his thoughts, words, and actions: with them. Not only was he not confede- and with a teachableness which demonstrarate with the first institutors of Christianity; ted that he was never disobedient to the heabut so implacably hostile was he to them, venly vision. that he had assisted at the death of the first martyr.

Indeed it seemed necessary, in order to demonstrate that the principles of ChristiAs the attestation of one notorious enemy anity are not unattainable, nor its precepts in favour of a cause, is considered equivalent impracticable, that the New Testament to that of many friends; thus did this dis- should, in some part, present to us a full extinguished adversary seem to be raised up to emplification of its doctrines and of its spirit; confirm and ratify all the truths he had so that they should, to produce their practical furiously opposed; to become the most able effect, be embodied in a form purely huadvocate of the cause he had reprobated, man,-for the character of the founder of its the most powerful champion of the Saviour religion is deified humanity. Did the Scriphe had vilified. He was raised up to unfold tures present no such exhibition, infidelity more at large those doctrines which could might have availed itself of the omission, for not be so explicitly developed in the histori- the purpose of asserting that Christianity cal portions, while an immediate revelation was only a bright chimera, a beautiful ficfrom heaven supplied to him the actual op- tion of the imagination; and Plato's fair idea portunities and advantages which the Evan- might have been brought into competition gelists had enjoyed. Nothing short of such with the doctrines of the Gospel. But in St. a Divine communication could have placed Paul is exhibited a portrait which not only Saint Paul on a level with the other apos- illustrates its Divine truth, but establishes ties; had he been taught of man, he must its moral efficacy; a portrait entirely free have been inferior to those who were taught from any distortion in the drawing, from any of Jesus. extravagance in the colouring.

For Saint Paul had not the honour to be It is the representation of a man strugthe personal disciple of his Lord. His con- gling with the sins and infirmities natural to version and preaching were subsequent to man; yet habitually triumphing over them the illumination of the Gospel; an intima- by that Divine grace which had first rescued tion possibly, that though revelation and hu- him from prejudice, bigotry, and unbelief.man learning should not be considered as It represents him resisting, not only such sharing between them the work of spiritual temptations as are common to men, but surinstruction, yet that human learning might mounting trials to which no other man was hence forward become a valuable adjunct, ever called; furnishing in his whole prac-

tice not only an instructor, but a model; | We should indeed have felt the same howing every where in his writings, that he same offers, the same supports, the same victories, are tendered to every suffering child of mortality,-that the waters of eternal life are not restricted to prophets and apostles, but are offered freely to every one that thirsteth,-offered without money and without price.

CHAP. III.

On the epistolary writers of the New Testament, particularly St. Paul.

adoring gratitude for the benefits of the Redeemer, but we should have been in comparative ignorance of the events consequent upon his resurrection. We should have been totally at a loss to know how and by whom the first Christian churches were founded; how they were conducted, and what was their progress. We should have had but a slender notion of the manner in which Christianity was planted, and how wonderfully it flourished in the heathen soil. Above all, we should have been deprived of that divine instruction, equally the dictate of the Holy Spirit, with which the Epistles abound; or, CAN the reader of taste and feeling, who which would have been worse than ignohas followed the much enduring hero of the rance, uninspired men, fanatics, or imposOdyssey with growing delight and increas- tors would have attached to the Gospel ing sympathy, though in a work of fiction, their glosses, conceits, errors, and misinterthrough all his wanderings, peruse with in-pretations.-We should have been turned ferior interest the genuine voyages of the over for information to some of those spuriApostle of the Gentiles over nearly the same ous gospels, and more than doubtful epistles, seas? The fabulous adventurer, once land- of which mention is made in the early part ed, and safe on the shores of his own Ithaca, of ecclesiastical history. What attempts the reader's mind is satisfied, for the object of his anxiety is at rest. But not so ends the tale of the Christian hero. Whoever closed Saint Luke's narrative of the diversified events of Saint Paul's travels; whoever accompanied him with the interest his history demands, from the commencement of his trials at Damascus to his last deliverance from shipwreck, and left him preaching in his own hired house at Rome, without feeling as if he had abruptly lost sight of some one very dear to him, without sorrowing that they should see his face no more, without indulging a wish that the intercourse could have been carried on to the end, though that end were martyrdom.

Such readers, and perhaps only such, will rejoice to renew their acquaintance with this very chiefest of the apostles; not indeed in the communication of subsequent facts, but of important principles; not in the records of the biographer, but in the doctrines of the saint. In fact, to the history of Paul in the Sacred Oracles succeed his Epistles. And these Epistles, as if through design, open with that to the beloved of God called to be saints' in that very city, the mention of his residence in which concludes the preceding narrative.

might have been made by such writers, to amuse curiosity with a sequel of the history of the persons named in the New Testa ment! How might they have misled us by unprofitable details of the Virgin Mary, or of Joseph of Arimathea!

What legends might have been invented, what idolatry even might have been incorporated with the true worship of God; what false history appended to the authentic record! Not only is the Divine Wisdom manifest in carrying on through the Epistles a confirmation of the Spirit and power of Christianity, but the same design is no less apparent in closing the book with the Apocalypse, a writing which contains the testimony of the last surviving disciple of Jesus is extreme old age, to which he seems to have been providentially preserved for the very purpose of protecting the Gospel from innovations which were beginning to corrupt it.

The narratives of the Evangelists would indeed have remained perfect in themselves, even without the Epistles; but never could its truths have been so clearly understood, or its doctrines so fully developed, as they now are. Our Saviour himself intimated, that there would be a more full and comHad the Sacred Canon closed with the plete knowledge of his doctrines, after he evangelical narrations, had it not been de- had ceased to deliver them, than there was termined in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, at the time. How indeed could the doctrine that a subsequent portion of inspired Scrip- of the atonement, and of pardon through his ture in another form, should have been add-blood, have been so explicitly set forth dued to the historical portions, that the Epis-ring his life, as they afterwards were in the tles should have conveyed to us the results Epistles, especially in those of St. Paul? of the mission and the death of Christ, how Saint Luke, in the opening of the Acts of immense would have been the disadvantage, the Apostles, refering the friend to whom he and how irreparable the loss: May we pre-inscribes it, to his former Treatise of all sume to add, how much less perfect would have been our view of the scheme of Christianity, had the New Testament been curtailed of this important portion of religious and practical instruction.

that Jesus began to do, and to teach, till he was taken up, after that he had through the Holy Ghost given commandment to the Apostles' seems plainly to indicate that the doing and the teaching were to be carried on