ers of us, even as we are also of Christ." Upon every investigation of their lives and writings, it will be found that they themselves were guided by the truths which they taught to others. One more proposition will conclude what we have to advance respecting the writers of the Bible; and indeed it may be considered as a concluding inference from all the foregoing series of reasoning. It is

VIII. THAT IT APPEARS UPON THE WHOLE, THAT THEY NEITHER COULD BE DECEIVED, NOR WOULD DECEIVE, IN ALL THAT THEY WROTE AND ASSERTED.

That they could not be deceived, is evident from the nature of the case. We have said that they were for the most part eye-witnesses of what they recorded; this was eminently the fact in respect of the apostles. They conversed with Jesus Christ-they saw all the miracles, that he wrought-they were present when When he rose from the he expired on the cross.

dead, he appeared to them, and to "above five hundred brethren at once." He ascended to heaven in their presence. He afterwards appeared to Paul in the way to Damascus, and to John in the Isle of Patmos. We have proved the same respecting the writers of the Old Testament, and particularly Moses. We have shewn, that what they did not see, they derived from the most certain evidences, and drew from the purest sources. Now such was the nature of the circumstances which they related, and the nature of the evidences which they possessed, that they could not be deceived. This we think a fair inference from the general train of our reasoning.

And it is equally evident from their characters, that they would not deceive. To suppose them capable of

this, is to lay them under the blackest of all imputations, and to discover hardened guilt, of which human nature, depraved as it is, appears hardly capable. We have proved that they themselves could not be mistaken: then, they must, if they deceived at all, have voluntarily become "false witnesses of God," and have forged falsehoods from first to last. Their lives were, on these principles, one continued scene of perjury, hypocrisy, and blasphemy. Pretending that God sanctioned their preaching, and sent them for this purpose, while in their hearts they knew it to be false, was impiety beyond almost the power of conception! In every instance they would be found to be liars; and they must, for no possible advantage, but in face of every danger, have deceived their fellow men solemnly and deliberately, day after day, through all their lives. They must have confederated to do this; and have stricken hands upon an engagement more terrible than death, and blacker than the designs of hell itself ever unfolded. This impious conduct would have been cruel to the last degree. They were trifling with the dearest and most important interests of mankind-worse than trifling,they were consigning them in cold blood to infamy, to torment, and to ruin. They were leading them to rely for peace and salvation upon a man whom they knew to be an impostor, and who had suffered publicly as a criminal. They were bringing all the calamities inseparable from their religion, knowing it to be false, upon the people whom they deceived. They exposed the lives of the innocent, in leading them to patronize a guilty fraud (by persuading them that it was true) which the rulers did not sanction; and their blood, on this supposition, with the tears of their orphans, of their widows, of their

bereaved families, must have mingled with the perjury and the blasphemy of their deceivers, in calling down the vengeance of heaven against a combination so horrible. They would, in a word, have been a society of the most infamous, cruel, abandoned wretches, that ever lived on the face of the globe: if, as they could not be deceived, they were capable of deceiving on a subject so important! And the men who confederated with them in forming the other parts of the scripture, must have entered into a plot to destroy thousands of lives here, to send the most dreadful calamities on the earth, and to ruin the interests of men for ever!

Now calmly examine the writings, the character, the deportment of the writers of the Old Testament and of the apostles of Jesus Christ, and say whether they appear to you to be the men capable of such deception, or likely to form a plot so horrible? What could induce them to do it? What interest had they to serve by it? It is not possible! But as they could not be deceived, so every thing conspires to prove that they would not deceive.

The fact is simply this. Their original talents were not considerable: their education was contracted; their sphere of life of the lowest order: their fears and unbelief abundant: their numbers small; and their minds bowed in the first instance by the prejudices of their country, all which prejudices were against a suffering Messiah. When they consented to share his ignominy, it was from a conviction resulting from the purity of his life, the force of truth in his teaching, the integrity of his character, and not from any resemblance which they traced between his situation and their preconceived opinions. Every day developed

something respecting him which disappointed their expectations, excited their astonishment, offended their pride, and opposed their views. Their minds were slowly enlightened, and they had not at the moment of his resurrection very clear views, either of the prophecies respecting him, or of his testimony respecting himself. Let these circumstances be calmly considered, let the amount of them be deliberately weighed, and it will be evident to every reflecting mind, that it would be a miracle of the first order, if twelve, or rather eleven (for one of them betrayed the Lord) such men, should have attempted to palm, as a fact, an invention upon the very people among whom it was said to have taken place: that they should have had the genius to project such a design: and above all, that they should have been successful in disseminating their fabrication, and in establishing it upon a basis which eighteen centuries have not been able to undermine! Such a supposition is too palpably absurd to bear reasoning upon. If it be objected that their subsequent deportment manifests genius, firmness, unbounded intellect, and astonishing energy of mind, a question arises, what was the cause of this change of character? We answer that this fact is in itself an evidence of the truth of their mission, inasmuch as it resulted from the sufferings and the resurrection of the Savior: it took place at a moment when there were thousands of witnesses present-"Parthians and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians:" it was evinced by the gift of tongues, so that the multitude wondered to hear

themselves addresed every man in his own language, while many of them knew that these very persons were before ignorant and unlettered; and it was accompanied by miraculous powers, which their adversaries could neither gainsay nor resist, and which were in force nearly a century.

The appeals which they made were not the language of imposition. Neither in their preaching, nor in their writings, did they ever lose sight of the facts asserted in the gospels, and especially of the death of their Master, in all its circumstances, and all its consequences. They did not cease to press it upon the memory, the feelings, the hearts, and the consciences of those who attended their ministry, the major part of whom were, in most instances, the murderers of the Lord of life and glory. They laid this sin to their charge, with undaunted courage, with invincible perseverance, with unshaken fidelity, when they said "Ye denied the Holy One, and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead: whereof we are witnesses." We have seen these faithful appeals confirmed in their sufferings, this bold and generous testimony written with their blood, this strong and reşistless evidence sealed by their death!

On these points we have the concessions of enemies. These things were not done in a corner. Others were also eyee-witnesses of this event. The adversaries of the primitive Christians cast in their teeth the poverty of their Master's life, and the ignominy of his death. By these means, while they designed to affix indelible disgrace to the cause of christianity, they decidedly proved that the facts recorded in the gospels respecting Jesus of Nazareth were strictly and indisputably true.