I.

SECT. heart, will confefs, that he finds within it a bitter root of fin, which struggles against every good refolution, and which refifts every divine precept. This internal malady affords a conftant fubject of grief even to the very beft of men: but, in the unreclaimed and impenitent, it rages with a tenfold fury; and urges them not unfrequently to a prefumptuous rejection of Scripture itself. Hence we find, that infidelity is ufually the offspring, not so much of an enlightened understanding, as of a depraved heart. The precepts of revealed religion, not its myfteries, are the true. caufes of unbelief. If Scripture be the word of God, the libertine and the debauchee are condemned to everlasting torments; if it be an impofture, the danger is removed, and the pleafures of fin may be pursued without interruption. What the heart wishes to be false, the head strives to disbelieve and the infpired volume is rejected, not because the evidences of its credibility have been found infufficient ; but because it denounces eternal perdition to the whoremonger and the adulterer, the drunkard and the fenfualift.

As the affections are the principal feat

of

of infidelity, so Christian faith, as con- CHAP. tradiftinguished from bare fpeculative be- V. lief, is fituated in the heart, rather than in the head. It confifts, not merely in an acknowledgment of the authenticity of Scripture; but in an unreferved obedience to its precepts, in a cordial fubmiffion to its authority, and in an unmixed reliance upon the merits of Jefus Chrift. To reft fatisfied with any inferior degree of conviction, is to labour under a moft dreadful delufion; and madly to build the hope of falvation, not upon the faith of a Chriftian, but upon the belief of a demon. Some indeed may vainly please themselves with I know not what undefined notion of the mercy of God: but the page of Scripture holds a very different language, and repeatedly declares; that to the impenitent and wilfully deluded no mercy whatsoever will be extended, but that a cup of inexorable wrath, and unallayed indignation, will be their eternal portion.

On these grounds, we are warned in the facred volume against an evil heart of unbelief; and it requires no great labour to prove, that a conviction of the understanding is of little avail, unless the affections

I.

SECT. be at the fame time thoroughly reformed. To God alone we muft undoubtedly leave the converfion of the heart; for without the prevenient grace. of his Holy Spirit vain will be all the endeavours of man: but as a deep conviction of the truth of Scripture is a neceffary prerequifite to this conversion, the subject, which has been difcuffed, is by no means devoid of importance to the interefts of Chriftianity. Every attempt to rescue the historical part of the Pentateuch from the imputations, which have been cast upon it by infidelity, tends ultimately to establish the authority of the Gofpel; and as fuch will be favourably received by the friend of Revelation. He will confider the common motive, by which all Chriftians are influenced; he will blefs the God of mercy for the various benefits, which refult from our holy religion; and his faith will receive additional strength, as he contemplates the church of Chrift fecurely founded upon a rock, and fhining with the pure ethereal luftre of undimi nifhed veracity.

1

SECT.

SECT. 1.

ITS INTERNAL CREDIBILITY.

CHAP. I.

FOUR RULES LAID DOWN FOR THE PUR

POSE OF ASCERTAINING THE TRUTH OF ANY RELIGION, AND APPLIED TO PAGANISM.

WHOEVER has attempted to imitate the artless fimplicity of truth, in a studied narration of feigned events, will have found how extremely difficult it is to avoid a perpetual recurrence of inconfiftencies. In addition to the unity of time, place, and action, a thousand little delicacies, which require the most minute and painful attention, are abfolutely neceffary, in order to give fuch a compofition the femblance of reality. If these be wanting, the magical illufion is immediately destroyed; and the glaring deficiency of contrivance provokes in the reader no fentiments except those of unmixed difguft. But if it be afferted, that the narrative, fo far from

.

being

II.

SECT. being an allowed tiffue of romantic adventures, comprehends nothing but plain matter of fact, the difficulty of connecting fuch a detail is then confiderably heightened. The page of authentic history, and the accurate calculations of chronology, will present infuperable obftacles on the one hand; while fome internal contradiction, fome unobferved inconfiftency, will equally ferve to expofe the imposture on the other. Many different religions have been proposed to mankind at different periods of the world, and by different perfons. Hence to a thinking mind a queftion will naturally occur; whether any of them are deferving of ferious attention, or, whether they are all to be confidered as equally falfe and contemptible. With whatever degree of juftice these several forms of worship may claim the fanction of divine authority; it is eafy to conceive in theory the peculiar kind of internal credibility, which would stamp with marks of indifputable truth the religion that poffeffed it. Such a theory is not affected either by the existence or non-existence of an authentic revelation; it is purely an abstract idea, like thofe pictures of a perfectly wife and good man, which the ancient