But when that period arrived, and those better things were offered, they, mistaking the nature of the promises, refused the things promised; and so, contrary to their own prophecies, adhered still to the type, when they ought to have embraced that which was typified. If God was the author of the Old Testament, they were in the right religion till the time prefixed for the arrival of the Messiah; but departed from it, and took up with another, when they rejected him, and passed the period at which he was to be expected. Since that, their religion consists in a preposterous expectation of an event either actually passed, or never to come: whereas they who embraced Christianity, received the substance of that religion which was prefigured under the law; and, be it right or wrong, are not typically, but really and truly, in the old religion, from which the unbelieving Jews apostatized. This is the very state of the case delivered by St. Paul, in the third of his epistle to the Galatians; where, having shewn, that the promise of the Messiah was given to Abraham,' ver. 8, and that the law was afterward added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made,' ver. 19, he then opens the use of the law, and says, 'it was the schoolmaster of the Jews, to bring them unto Christ, that they might be justified by faith,' ver. 24. He accordingly, Rom. x. 4, calls Christ, or the Messiah, 'the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.' Whatever we think of St. Paul's inspiration, as real, or only pretended, we cannot help considering this way of interpreting the promises of the Old Testament, and the Law, and terminating their accomplishment in the Messiah, as just and right; and therefore must regard the religion of St. Paul as that very religion which was prophetically preached in the Old Testament.

Laying it, therefore, down as a point already proved, that there is but one religion set forth in both the Testaments, though under different dispensations or covenants, let us, in order to try whether this is the true religion, examine the writings, wherein it is contained, by the rules prescribed in the former Discourse, that we may judge, if we can, of the divine original and authority pretended to by these writings, which will decide the question about the truth or falsity of the religion they set before us.

In the first place, we have here a written record of the religion under question; which gives us a fair opportunity of examining its merits; an advantage not to be expected in any religion depending merely either on the vague opinions and reasonings of man, or on oral tradition, so liable to be changed and corrupted. And as to the genuineness of this record, it is infinitely less to be suspected, than that of any other history or account of former times; because the people in whose hands it was, always regarded it with the utmost veneration, as the book of God himself; proved their principles, and decided their disputes, by it; and therefore were extremely watchful over the original text, lest any one should mutilate or corrupt it, in order by that means to suppress its evidence against him, or pervert it for him. It is farther to be observed, that all the other books in the world have not produced so many copies, translations, comments, nor so great a variety of consequent writings, all drawing their matter, their arguments, and illustrations, from thence. In every age since the use of letters and learning flourished in the world, this book hath been the fountain not of a few obscure tracts, but of whole libraries; and hath found employment for more inquirers, readers, writers, disputants, than all other histories, than all other arts and sciences, put together. As all this made the loss of the book itself a thing impossible, so it made the corruption of it a thing next to impossible. He who doubts the genuineness of this book, and yet believes in that of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Livy, ought, for the same reason, to look on them as less genuine than Valerius Maximus, Aulus Persius, or Censorinus; for, by his rule, the more a book is read, considered, and quoted, the more likely it is to be corrupted; or, in other words, the greater its authority was in all former ages, the less it ought to be esteemed in this.

There can indeed be no rational dispute about the antiquity and genuineness of the Old Testament, while we have the Jews to vouch for it, whose origin, whose laws, whose pretensions and expectations, it contains. If these men could be supposed to have corrupted any part of it, the prophecies relating to the Messiah were the most likely to have suffered under their hands; which, nevertheless, still stare them in the face from almost every page of their own Scrip

tures. There is nothing to be found in the history of mankind so extraordinary as what relates to this people.

They are by far the oldest race of men on the globe, subsisting distinctly from all other nations on one economy of laws and customs, although scattered through all countries, and nowhere possessed of one, where they might unite, and govern themselves according to those laws. They have many ages ago buried all the ancient empires with which they had any thing to do, although themselves of little strength at the best, and for the most part oppressed and persecuted, as men, between whom and the rest of the world there is no common tie of humanity. They are venerated for their antiquity, and from an opinion, that they were once the favourite people of God; and yet despised as the very scum and offscourings of the human species. They are, in short, the miracle of history; but in nothing so wonderful as in their scrupulous and zealous attachment to a book that mentions and condemns their whole economy, as out of date, and superseded by another; and records the curses of Almighty God denounced against them in a hundred places of that book, and executed on them in all places of the world, and through every age since their apostacy. Now this can be traced to no other cause but Divine Providence; nor can any other imaginable reason be assigned why Providence should thus deal by them, unless it is, that they may the more effectually vouch for the genuineness of those writings, wherein his prescience, and their blindness, are recorded.

As to the antiquity and purity of the New Testament, it cannot be called in question, till every other book, no way related to Christianity, and older than our own times, is, with reason, condemned as spurious, in regard to its pretended original, and as too corrupt to be depended on in any of its parts; nor, indeed, even then, because the arguments affecting their credit cannot strike at a book, the truth of which had been attested by the blood of so many martyrs, and its authority alleged by so many myriads of men, in every age since it was published, for tenets, which they held on all sides as dear as their lives, against others which they detested and avoided more than death.

If any one objects here, that as much may be said for the antiquity and purity of the Alcoran, we deny it. What

martyrs sacrificed their lives for the truth of the religion it exhibits, either in the lifetime of its author, or soon after; unless we call those martyrs, who fell in battles fought for the plunder of nations, to which this religion pretended to give its professors a right? What controversies, what councils, drew their arguments from, or decided their differences by, this book, in the first ages after its publication? The Mahometans had not, for a long time after the decease of their pretended prophet, any religious disputes, if we do not call those such which were set on foot about the right of succession; and with these the Alcoran had nothing to do. During this time Abubeker, who formed the incoherent papers of Mahomet into a book, and others who had the keeping of that book, might have done with it what they pleased. But, from the time this book began to be often copied, it could not possibly have admitted of much alteration, although it might have been corrupted with vastly more ease than the New Testament, so much oftener transcribed from the beginning, and translated into such a variety of languages. It is indeed next to downright madness, to imagine this record of Christianity could have had any other date than that of the church which kept it; or that a book so copied, so quoted, so translated, so expounded, so universally and continually appealed to, could have been materially adulterated.

But, supposing both the Testaments to be as ancient and as uncorrupted as we please, yet still we are to inquire whether they are the work of God, or not. There are two ways by which the author of a book may be known; first, by his style and matter; and, secondly, by his owning it himself.

As to the style of the Scriptures, it is, in one respect, as various as the ages in which it was dictated, or the peculiar genius of each prophet or apostle who committed it to writing can well be supposed to have made it, had no common inspirer or dictator directed their pens. Their dif ferent choice of words, and use of phrases, are apparent, not only in the originals, but even in the translations. Yet, in another respect, there are several peculiarities that seem to distinguish it from the writings of men, though under the disadvantage of a translation, made by mere men;

which does not hinder it from demonstrating infinitely more beauty in one part; more force and pathos in another; more true sublimity, and yet simplicity, in all; than the most exquisite productions of human genius in their original dress. It is delivered in a species of writing quite distinct from that of the classics, and more natural. Those justly admired performances shew the highest improvement to which the mind of man can, by its own efforts, ascend. They are perfectly exact and delicate. They are so highly polished and finished, that hardly a single thought or word can be replaced by another, without a sensible loss. But then, with all this, they are really stiff, laboured, low and languid, in comparison of the Scriptures. The art with which they are penned discovers itself, in spite of all their care to conceal it, not only in the texture of the work at large, and the nice adjustment of its matter, but in the choice of every phrase, and the very cadence of every period. It is quite otherwise in the Bible. We have there no appearance of art; no manner of care about minutenesses, about polished words, and prim phrases, and little prettinesses. It does not appear, from any one passage of the whole, that the writer had the least intention to strike the minds of his readers with any thing else than the force of his thoughts, conveyed in a rough and masculine dress. Hence arises this admirable effect, that no part of our attention is impertinently amused with the words, but all given to the sentiment, which goes naked to the heart with an energy not to be resisted. When men speak, they require art and address to give strength and persuasion to what they say. But it is not so with God. He can speak to the mind by spirit and thought alone; and never uses words, but for a memorial of what he says. When he condescends to deliver himself in this human vehicle, he will not vouchsafe to borrow any thing from it, but mere conveyance; nay, he disdains the low assistance of method, because it borders on art. He scatters flowers and fruit with such an unaffected profusion, as sets the art of the gardener in a very contemptible light, on the comparison. Hence it is, that as a garden can please us but for a very little time, whereas the face of nature is ever new and delightful; so the finical performances of writers uninspired, howsoever pleasing they may be at first, soon grow dull