come of it. They had the whole authority vested in them, and their reputation was deeply concerned: yet they rather chose to bear the open charge of the basest murder and prevarication imaginable, than excite any further inquiry, by bringing either the soldiers who guarded the sepulchre, or the disciples who were said to have stolen the body, to a public trial; though they had the latter in their custody. The eleven apostles, (to whom a twelfth was soon added,) were a sufficient number of competent witnesses : being men of plain sense and blameless lives, they could not but identify the person of their Master, whom they had so long attended; they unanimously testified, that they had received the fullest assurance of their senses to his resurrection, and at length beheld him ascend up towards heaven, till he was received out of their sight; and they persisted invariably in this testimony for many years. They were evidently intimidated to a great degree by the crucifixion of their Lord, and backward to credit his resurrection; and they could have no possible secular motives, to invent and propagate such a report: for ignominy, torture, and death must be the probable consequences of espousing the cause of one, who had been crucified as a deceiver. In all other things, they appeared simple, upright, holy men; yet, if in this they deceived, the world never yet produced such a company of artful and wicked impostors though it is evident, they could propose no secular advantage to themselves from their deep laid and well conducted schemes! For they spent all the rest of their lives in promoting the religion of Jesus, renouncing every earthly interest, facing all kinds of opposition and persecution, bearing contempt and ignominy, prepared habitually to seal their testimony with their blood; and most of them actually dying martyrs in the cause, recommending it with their latest breath as worthy of universal acceptation. It is like, wise observable, that when they went forth to preach Christ as risen from the dead, they were manifestly changed, in almost every respect, from what they had before been their timidity gave place to the most undaunted courage, their carnal prejudices vanished, their ambitious contests ceased, their narrow views were immensely expanded; and zeal for the honour of their Lord, with love to the souls of men, seems to have engrossed and elevated all the powers of their minds. There were also many other competent witnesses to this great event, even to the number of 500: these too concurred in the same testimony to the end of their lives; and neither fear, hope, or dissention among themselves, induced so much as one of them to vary from the testimony of the rest: nay, the very apostates from christianity, however malignant, never openly charged the apostles with any imposition in this respect. A more complete human testimony to any event cannot even be imagined: for if our Lord! had shown himself, "openly to all the people" of the Jews, and their rulers had persisted in rejecting him; it would have rather weakened than confirmed the evidence; and if they had unanimously received him as the Messiah, it might have. excited in others a suspicion, that it was a plan concerted for aggrandizing the nation. But God himself was also pleased to add his own testi mony to that of his servants; conferring on them the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enabling them to impart the same miraculous powers to others, by the laying on of their hands. Thus the number of witnesses continually increased, the testimony was more widely diffused, and no enemy could deny that they, who attested Christ's resurrection, performed most stupendous miracles, (Acts iv. 13-16.) In consequence of this, the unlettered, unarmed, and despised preachers of a crucified and risen Saviour, prevailed against all the combined power, learning, wealth, superstition, and wickedness of the world, till Christianity was completely established upon the ruins of Judaism and Pagan idolatry!-Here again, it may be demanded, when could the belief of such facts have been obtruded on mankind, if they had never happened? Surely not in the age when they were said to have been witnessed by tens of thousands, who were publicly challenged to deny them if they could not in any subsequent age; for the origin of Christianity was ascribed to them, and millions must have been persuaded, that they had always believed those things,' which they had never to that time so much as heard of! We may then venture to assert, that no past event was ever so fully proved as our Lord's resurrection; and that it would not be half so preposterous to doubt, whether such a man as Julius Cæsar ever existed, as it would be to question, whether Jesus actually arose from the dead—What then do they mean, who oppose some little apparent variations, in the account given of this event by the four Evangelists, (which have repeatedly been shown capable of an easy reconciliation;) to such an unparalleled complication of evidence that it did actually take place? IV. The prophecies contained in the sacred Scriptures, and fulfilling to this day, prove them to be divinely inspired. These form a species of perpetual miracles, which challenge the investigation of men in every age; and which, though overlooked by the careless and prejudiced, cannot fail of producing conviction proportioned to the attention paid to them. The prophecies of the Messiah, which are found in almost all the books of the Old Testament, when compared with the exact accomplishment of them, as recorded in the authentic writings of the Evangelists, abundantly prove them to have been penned under the guidance of the Holy Spirit: whilst the existence of the Jews, as a people differing from all others upon the face of the earth, and their regard to these writings as the sacred oracles handed down from their progenitors, sufficiently vouch for their antiquity: though further proof in abundance is at hand, did brevity allow me to insist upon it. According to the predictions of these books, Nineveh hath been desolated*; Babylon swept with the besom of destruction; Tyre become a place to dry nets in ‡; Egypt the basest of the kingdoms, &c. § These and many other events, fulfilling ancient prophecies so many ages * Nahum i. ii. iii. Ezek. xxvi. 4. 5. Isaiah xiii. xiv. after they were delivered, can never be accounted for; except by allowing, that He, who sees the end from the beginning, thus revealed his secret purposes, that the accomplishment of them might prove the Scriptures to be his word of instruction to mankind. In like manner, there are evident predictions interwoven with the writings of almost every penman of the New Testament, as a divine attestation to their doctrine. The destruction of Jerusalem, with all the circumstances predicted in the Evangelists, (an account of which may be seen in Josephus's History of the Jewish wars ;) the series of ages, during which that city hath been "trodden under foot of the gentiles;" the long continued dispersion of the Jews, and the conversion of the nations to Christianity; the many antichristian corruptions of the gospel; the superstition, uncommanded austerities, idolatry, tyranny, and persecution of the Roman hierarchy; the division of the empire into ten kingdoms; their concurrence during many ages to support the usurpations of the church of Rome; and the existence of Christianity to this day, amidst so many enemies, who have used every possible method to destroy it; when diligently compared with the predictions of the New Testament, do not come short of the fullest demonstration which the case will admit of, that the books, which contain them are the unerring word of God. man V. Only the Scriptures, (and such books as make them their basis,) introduce the infinite God speaking in ner worthy of himself, with simplicity, majesty, and authority. His character, as there delineated, comprises all possible excellence without any intermixture; his laws and ordinances accord to his perfections; his works and dispensations exhibit them; and all his dealings with his creatures bear the stamp of infinite wisdom, power, justice, purity, truth, goodness, and mercy, harmoniously displayed. The description there given of the state of the world, and of human nature, widely differs from our ideas of them; yet facts unanswerably prove it to be exactly true. The records of every nation, the events of every age, and the history of every individual, confute men's self-flattery in this respect; and prove that the penmen of the Bible knew the human character better, than any philosopher, ancient or modern, ever did. Their account teaches us what men are about, and what may be expected from them: whilst all who form a different estimate of human nature find their principles inapplicable to facts, their theories incapable of being reduced to practice, and their expectations strangely disappointed. The Bible, well understood, en ables us to account for those events, which have appeared inexplicable to men in every age: and the more carefully any one watches and scrutinizes all the motives, intentions, imaginations, and desires of his own heart for a length of time; the clearer will it appear to him, that the penmen of the Scriptures give a far more just account of his disposition and character, than he could have done himself. In short, man is such a being, and the world is in such a state, as they have described: yet multiplied facts, constant observation, and reiterated experience, are insufficient to convince us of it, till we first learn it from the Bible; and then comparing all that passes within and around us, with what we there read, we become more and more acquainted with our own hearts, and established in the belief of its divine original. The mysteries contained in Scripture rather confirm than invalidate this conclusion; for a pretended revelation without mystery would confute itself. Incomprehensibility is inseparable from God, and from all his works, even the most inconsiderable, as the growth of a blade of grass. The mysteries of the Scriptures are sublime, interesting, and useful; they display the divine perfections, lay a foundation for our hope, and inculcate humility, reverence, love, and gratitude. What is incomprehensible must be mysterious but it may be intelligible as far as revealed; and though it connect with things above our reason, it may imply nothing contrary to it. So that, in all respects, the contents of the Bible are suited to convince the serious inquirer, that it is the word of God. |