fied at Jerusalem by the Jewish rulers, was the Son of God, and the Lord of all things. I appeal to your consciences, whether this looks at all like the contrivance of artful and designing men. It was evidently charging upon the princes of the country the most criminal and aggravated murder; indeed, all things considered, the most enormous act of wickedness which the sun had ever seen. They might therefore depend upon it, that these rulers would immediately employ all their art and power to confute their testimony, and to destroy their persons. Accordingly one of them was presently stoned, and another quickly after beheaded;—and most of the rest were scattered abroad into strange cities, where they would be sure to be received with great prejudices raised against them amongst the Jews by reports from Jerusalem, and vastly strengthened by their expectations of a temporal Messiah; expectations which, as the apostles knew by their own experience, it was exceeding difficult to root out of men's minds; expectations which would render the doctrine of Christ crucified an insuperable stumblingblock to the Jews.

Nor could they expect, a much better reception amongst the Gentiles; with whom their business was to persuade them to renounce the gods of their ancestors, and to depend on a person who had died the death of a malefactor and a slave; to persuade them to forego the pompous idolatries in which they had been educated, and all the sensual indulgences with which their religion, (if it might be called a religion) was attended, to worship one invisible God through one Mediator, in the most plain and simple

manner; and to receive a set of precepts, most directly calculated to control and restrain, not only the enormities of men's actions, but the irregularities of their hearts. And to engage them to this, they had no other arguments to bring, but such as were taken from the views of an invisible state of happiness or misery, of which they asserted their crucified Jesus to be the supreme disposer; who should another day dispense his blessings, or his vengeance, as the Gospel had been embraced, or rejected. Now, could it be imagined, that men would easily be persuaded, merely on the credit of their affirmation, or in compliance with their importunity, to believe things which to their prejudiced minds would appear so improbable, and to submit to impositions, to their corrupt inclinations so insupportable? And if they could not persuade them to it, what could the apostles then expect? What, but to be insulted as fools or madmen, by one sort of people; and by another, to be persecuted with the most savage and outrageous cruelty, as blasphemers of the gods, as seducers of the people, and as disturbers of the public peace? All which we know accordingly happened. Nay, they assure us, that their Lord had often warned.them of it; and that they themselves expected it, and thought it necessary to admonish their followers to expect it too; and it appears, that far from drawing back upon that account, as they would surely have done if they had been governed by secular motives, they became so much the more zealous and courageous, and encouraged each other to resist even to blood. Now, as this is a great evidence of the integrity and piety

A most difficult undertaking!

of their character, and thus illustrates the former head; so it serves to the purpose now immediately in view; that is, it proves how improbable it is, that any person of common sense should engage in an imposture, from which (as many have justly observed) they could, on their own principles, have nothing to expect, but ruin in this world, and damnation in the When, therefore, we consider and compare their character and their circumstances, it appears utterly improbable, on various accounts, that they would have attempted in this article to impose upon the world. But suppose that, in consequence of some unaccountable as well as undiscoverable frenzy, they had ventured on the attempt, it is easy to show,

next.

4. That, humanly speaking, they must quickly have perished in it, and their foolish cause must have died with them, without ever gaining any credit in the world.

One may venture to say this in general, on the principles which I before laid down; but it appears still more evident, when we consider the nature of the fact they asserted, in conjunction with the methods they took to engage men to believe it; methods which, had the apostles been impostors, must have had the most direct tendency to ruin both their scheme and themselves.

1. Let us a little more particularly reflect on the nature of that grand fact, the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ; which, as I observed, was the great foundation of the Christian scheme, as first exhibited by the apostles.-The resurrection of a dead man, and his ascension into, and abode in, the upper world, was so strange a thing, that a

thousand objections would immediately be raised against it; and some extraordinary proof would justly be required as a balance to them. Now, I wish the rejecters of the Gospel would set themselves to invent some hypothesis, which should have any appearance of probability, to show how such an amazing story should ever gain credit in the world, if it had not some very convincing proof. Where, and when, could it first begin to be received? Was it in the same, or a succeeding age? Was it at Jerusalem, the spot of ground on which it is said to have happened, or in Greece, or Italy, or Asia, or Africa? You may change the scene, and the time, as you please, but you cannot change the difficulty. Suppose twelve

Take it in a parallel instance. men in London were now to affirm, that a person executed there as a malefactor in a public manner, a month or six weeks ago, or if you please, a year, or five, or ten years since, (for it is much the same,) was a prophet sent from God with extraordinary powers, that he was raised from the dead, that they conversed with him after his revival, and at last saw him taken up into heaven; would their united testimony make them be believed there? Or suppose them, if you please, to disperse, and that one or two of them should come hither, and go on to more distant places, suppose Leicester, Nottingham, or York, and tell their story there; and that others were to carry it over to Paris, or Amsterdam, or to Vienna, or Madrid: could they expect any more credit with us, or with them; or hope for any thing better, than to be looked upon as lunatics and treated as such ?And if they should go into other places, and attempt

to mend their scheme, by saying their Master was put to death one hundred or two hundred years ago, when there could be no historical evidence of it discovered, and no proof given but their own confident assertion, would they remove, or would they not rather increase, the difficulty? Or would they, in any of these cases, gain credit by the most dexterous tricks of legerdemain, of which you can suppose them masters? Especially if they should undertake, in consequence of such supposed facts, to engage men to renounce the religion in which they had been educated; to deny themselves in their dearest pas sions and most important worldly interests; and even probably to hazard their liberties and their lives in dependence on a future reward, to be received in a place and state, which no man living on earth had ever seen or known? You would readily allow this to be an insupposable case; and why should you suppose it to have happened sixteen or seventeen hundred years ago? You may assure yourselves, that the reason, and the passions of mankind were then as strong as they are now. But let us a little more particularly consider,

2. The manner in which the apostles undertook to prove the truth of their testimony to this fact; and it will evidently appear, that instead of confirming their scheme, it must have been sufficient utterly to have overthrown it, had it been itself the most probable imposture that the wit of man could ever have contrived. You know, they did not merely assert, that they had seen miracles wrought by this Jesus, but that he had endowed themselves with a variety of miraculous powers. And these they un