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tus; and that is, the allowing, and even the recommending to their disciples, a compliance with the religion, and with the religious rites, of every coun try into which they came. In speaking of the founders of new institutions, we cannot forget Mahomet. His licentious transgressions of his own licentious rules; his abuse of the character which he assumed, and of the power which he had ac quired, for the purposes of personal and privileged indulgence; his avowed claim of a special permis sion from heaven of unlimited sensuality, is known to every reader, as it is confessed by every writer, of the Moslem story.

Secondly, In the histories which are left us of Jesus Christ, although very short, and although dealing in narrative, and not in observation or panegyric, we perceive, beside the absence of every appearance of vice, traces of devotion, humility, benignity, mildness, patience, prudence. I speak of traces of those qualities, because the qualities themselves are to be collected from incidents; inasmuch as the terms are never used of Christ in the Gospels, nor is any formal character of him drawn in any part of the New Testament.

Thus we see the devoutness of his mind, in his frequent retirement to solitary prayer;* in his ha-. bitual giving of thanks; in his reference of the beauties and operations of nature to the bounty of Providence in his earnest addresses to his Father, more particularly that short but solemn one before the raising of Lazarus from the dead :|| and in the deep piety of his behaviour in the garden, on the last evening of his life : bis humility, in his constant reproof of contentions for superiority:** the benignity and affectionateness of his temper, in his kindness to children ;tt in the tears which he shed over his falling country, and upon the death of bis friend in his noticing of the widow's mite; TT in his parables of the good Samaritan, of the un

Matt. xiv. 28. Luke ix. 28.
Matt. xi. 25. Mark viii. 6.
Matt. vi. 26---28.

Matt. xxvi. 36----47.

Tf Mark x. 16.

John xi. 35.

Matt. xxvi. 36.

John vi. 23. Luke xxii. 17.
John xi, 41.
**Mark ix. 33.

Luke xix. 41.

Mark xli. 42.

grateful servant, and of the Pharisee and publican, of which parables no one but a man of humanity could have been the author: the mildness and lenity of his character is discovered, in his rebuke of the forward zeal of his disciples at the Samaritan village* in his expostulation with Pilate; in his prayer for his enemies at the moment of his suffering, which, though it has been since very properly and frequently imitated, was then, I apprehend, new. His prudence is discerned, where prudence is most wanted, in his conduct on trying occasions, and in answers to artful questions. Of these, the following are examples :-His withdrawing, in various instances, from the first symptoms of tumult, and with the express care, as appears from Saint Matthew, of carrying on his ministry in quietness; his declining of every species of interference with the civil affairs of the country, which disposition is manifested by his behaviour in the case of the woman caught in adultery,** and in his repulse of the application which was made to him, to interpose his decision about a disputed inheritance :†t his judicious, yet, as it should seem, unprepared answers, will be confessed in the case of the Roman tribute;t in the difficulty concerning the interfering relations of a future state, as proposed to him in the instance of a woman who had married seven brethren,|||| and, more especially, in his reply to those who demanded from him an explanation of the authority by which he acted, which reply consisted in propounding a question to them, situated between the very difficulties into which they were insidiously endeavouring to draw him.¶¶

Our Saviour's lessons, besides what has already been remarked in them, touch, and that oftentimes by very affecting representations, upon some of the most interesting topics of human duty, and of human meditation upon the principles, by which the decisions of the last day will be regulated ;***

2

*Luke ix. 55. Matt. xiv. 22. Chap. xii. 19. tt Luke xii. 14.

Matt. xxi. 28.

t John xix. 11. Luke v. 15, 16.

Luke xxiii. 34.
John v. 13. vi. 15.
** John viii. 1.

Matt. xxii. 19.
¶¶ Matt. xxi. 23, &c

*** Matt. xxv. 3), &c..

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the superior, or rather the supreme, importance of religion:* upon penitence, by the most pressing calls, the most encouraging invitations ;t upon selfdenial, watchfulness, placability, confidence in God,** the value of spiritual, that is, of mental wor ship,tt the necessity of moral obedience, and the directing of that obedience to the spirit and princ ple of the law, instead of seeking for evasions in a technical construction of its terms.‡‡

If we extend our argument to other parts of the New Testament, we may offer, as amongst the best and shortest rules of life, or, which is the same thing, descriptions of virtue, that have ever been delivered, the following passages:

"Pure religion, and undefiled, before God and the Father, is this; to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

"Now the end of the commandment is, charity, out of a pure heart and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned."¶¶

"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that deny. ing ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world ***

Enumerations of virtues and vices, and those su ficiently accurate, and unquestionably just, are given by Saint Paul to his converts in three severa Epistles.ttt

The relative duties of husbands and wives, or pa rents and children, of masters and servants, d Christian teachers and their flocks, of governors and their subjects, are set forth by the same wr ter,‡‡‡ not indeed with the copiousness, the detail or the distinctness, of a moralist, who should, is

Mark viii. 35.

Matt. vi. 31--33.

Luke xii. 4, 5. 16---21.
Matt. v. 29.

Matt. xxiv. 42.---xxv.
Matt. xvii. 33, &c.

† Luke xv. Mark xiii. 37. f Luke xvii. 4. **Matt. vi. 25---30.

Matt. v. 21.
Tim. i. 5.

13.

tt John iv. 23, 24.
James i. 27.

*** Tit. ii. 11, 12.

fit Gal. v. 19. Col. iii. 12. 1 Cor. xiii.

11 Eph. v. 33, vi. . 5. 2 Cor. vi. 6, 7. Rom. xii.

these days, sit down to write chapters upon the subject, but with the leading rules and principles in each; and, above all, with truth, and with authority.

Lastly, the whole volume of the New Testament. is replete with piety; with, what were almost unknown to heathen moralists, devotional virtues, the most profound veneration of the Deity, an habitual sense of his bounty and protection, a firm confidence in the final result of his counsels and dispensations, a disposition to resort, upon all occasions, to his mercy, for the supply of human wants, for assistance in danger, for relief from pain, for the pardon of sin.

CHAP. III.

The candour of the writers of the New Testament.

I MAKE this candour to consist, in their putting down many passages, and noticing many circumstances, which no writer whatever was likely to have forged; and which no writer would have chosen to appear in his book, who had been careful to present the story in the most unexceptionable form, or who had thought himself at liberty to carve and mould the particulars of that story, according to his choice, or according to his judgment of the effect.

A strong and well-known example of the fairness of the evangelists, offers itself in their account of Christ's resurrection, namely, in their unanimously stating, that after he was risen, he appeared to his disciples alone. I do not mean that they have used the exclusive word alone; but that all the instances which they have recorded of his appearance, are instances of appearance to his disciples; that their reasonings upon it, and allusions to it, are confined to this supposition; and that, by one of them, Peter is made to say, "Him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose froni

the dead." The most common understanding must have perceived that the history of the resurrection would have come with more advantage, if they had related that Jesus appeared, after he was risen, to his foes as well as his friends, to the Scribes and Pharisees, the Jewish council, and the Roman governor or even if they had asserted the public appearance of Christ in general unqualified terms, without noticing, as they have done, the presence of his disciples on each occasion, and noticing it in such a manner as to lead their readers to suppose that none but disciples were present. They could have represented it in one way as well as the other. And if their point had been, to have the religion believed, whether true or false; if they had fabricated the story ab initio; or if they had been disposed either to have delivered their testimony as witnesses, or to have worked up their materials and information as historians, in such a manner as to render their narrative as specious and unobjectionable as they could; in a word, if they had thought of any thing but of the truth of the case, as they understood and believed it; they would, in their account of Christ's several appearances after his resurrection, at least have omitted this restriction. At this distance of time, the account, as we have it, is perhaps more credible than it would have been the other way; because this manifestation of the historians' candour, is of more advantage to their testimony, than the difference in the circumstances of the account would have been to the nature of the evidence. But this is an effect which the evangelists would not foresee: and I think that it was by no means the case at the time when the books were composed.

Mr. Gibbon has argued for the genuineness of the Koran, from the confessions which it contains, to the apparent disadvantage of the Mahometan cause. The same defence vindicates the genuineness of our Gospels, and without prejudice to the cause at all.

There are some other instances in which the Vol. ix. c. 50, note 96.

Acts x. 42, 41.

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