SIR,

THE

CRITERION,

&c.

My

Y surprise has not been greater than my concern to observe that a person of your good sense, candour, and learning, should have reasoned himself, as you say you have done, into an unfavourable opinion of the evidences of Christianity. Ever since our last conversation on this subject, my thoughts have turned principally on your scruples, and the unreasonableness of them; and the result of my reflections you shall have in the present sheets. Nor do I think that this address needs any apology. The importance of the subject, and

my repeated promises that I would give you my thoughts concerning it, sufficiently plead my excuse. And happy should I esteem myself, if any thing I suggest, prove a means of bringing you back to that religion which you seem to have forsaken, and of satisfying you that the reasons you assign for rejecting the miracles recorded in the New Testament, ought not to weigh with one of your discernment.

You may remember what points you have chiefly insisted upon in our debates on this subject. You granted (as every thinking person must grant) that a power of working miracles, vested in one assuming the character of a Teacher from God, would sufficiently establish the truth of his claim; "but you urged, withal, that there was no solid foundation to believe that any such person was ever vested with such a power; for that the miracles of Jesus and his apostles, related in the New Testament, were not supported by stronger evidence thant were the prodigies that disgrace the pages of Livy, and the Legendary Tales that swell

the lives of the Romish saints. Now these latter accounts are, on all hands, justly rejected as false, but the former, it seems, are admitted as true: but then, how, you say, can we fairly dispute the authenticity of the one, and insist so much on the credibility of the other? For, as the testimony in both is equally strong, the miracles recorded in both the accounts must be equally credible. That, therefore, you had no way of extricating yourself out of this labyrinth, but by rejecting, at once, all miraculous pretensions whatever."

The whole dispute subsisting between us may be stated thus.-The Protestant Christian thinks himself obliged, from all the principles of reason, to believe that evidence true which is brought to support the Gospel miracles: but is at liberty, he thinks, from the same principles of reason, to doubt or disbelieve the miracles ascribed to the Pagans of old, or to the Papists of later times, or, indeed, to any other person since the publication of the Gospel. But, herein, you are pleased to charge us with a strange and

inconsistent belief, because, you say, the evidence for the truth of the miracles in each case, is either the very same, or equally strong.

I have not the least hesitation when I pronounce this charge to be groundless. And I trust, that I shall be able to convince every candid reader of this treatise, addressed to you, that base metal is not more easily detected, when an attempt is made to pass it for gold, than are the false pretensions of Paganism and Popery, when an attempt is made to put them on the same footing of credibility with the miracles of Jesus and his apostles.

I most readily admit that the credibility of such extraordinary performances, as are miracles, will not be sufficiently ascertained, unless the accounts of them be authenticated by such a weight of unexceptionable testimony, as must satisfy every candid and capable inquirer after truth.

You cannot, surely, refuse to join issue with me here. But before we proceed, give me leave to observe, that it is in vain to