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let us be clothed with the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left. But, above all, let us take unto ourselves" the sword of the Spirit," which is the word of God; that, whilst with the hope and helmet of salvation, we guard our minds from terror and despair, with this "sword of the Spirit," with some godly text of Scripture rightly applied, we may cut asunder every flimsy thread of reasoning, which the ingenuity of man has perversely formed, to distract the feelings and disturb the understandings of weaker brethren. "It is written," said our Saviour, under his temptation by the devil; "It is written," was all that he said, and he vanquished his adversary. Search the Scriptures with fidelity and meekness, and make the same answer in your own temptations, and you will soon learn to feel the force of the Word of God, and to confess that it is the only instrument which erring man can safely use in his great contest with the enemies of his soul.

DISCOURSE IV.

2 TIM. chap. iii. ver. 13.

"Deceiving and being deceived."

THE honesty and sincerity of the Evangelists as men, and their credibility as witnesses of the facts and doctrines which they declare that they had seen and heard, are of such primary and essential importance in every inquiry or attempt to prove the truth or divinity of the Christian religion, that I considered it as absolutely necessary to repeat, in my last Discourse, those various arguments which have been so often and forcibly urged in defence of their testimony. Upon a review of those reasonings I am unable to perceive their deficiency or inconclusiveness in any single point, or to imagine that there is any thing either in the circumstances under which their evidence has reached us, or the facts to which that evidence relates, which should disturb, in the

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smallest degree, our confidence in its genuineness, or our belief in its substance. There are others, however (God is their judge), who, coming forth before the world with pretensions to a juster mode of reasoning, and a more impartial spirit of philosophy (but, as I humbly conceive, both deceiving and being deceived"), have ventured to pronounce a different opinion, and to affirm, that, however credible the Evangelists might be to their contemporaries, they are no longer possessed of the same authority. They assert, that the lapse of time which has passed away since the Scriptures were written, has gradually undermined the strength of their testimony; and that, even had that strength not been thus weakened by the canker of ages, it would have been insufficient to bear the weight which is imposed upon it, of assuring us of the occurrence of a variety of miraculous facts. Now, if in examining the principles by which these conclusions are supported, we can find that they are altogether inapplicable to the Christian writers, we shall have done sufficient to vindicate our own holy faith, and without entering at all into the general soundness of the reasoning when applied to cases of a different complexion. It shall, therefore, be my endeavour to shew that the cause of Christianity is of such a nature as to be exempt from the force of these objections, however great

may be that force when directed against other religions.

1. In the first place, we are to consider the circumstances under which the testimony of the Evangelists has reached us.

Now, it is evident that we ourselves have not, like the primitive Christians, either seen the works or heard the words, or been conversant with the person of our Saviour, or of his Apostles. All that we reason upon as to the religion of Jesus, and all that we know of the character, and conduct, and doctrine of his immediate disciples, is derived, as a matter of history, from the testimony of others-from the dwellers in distant countries, and in ages remote from our own. Hence it has been insinuated by some, that the probability of the truth of Christianity, like the probability of all other matters of history, must have suffered, from the very nature of the case, a considerable and unavoidable diminution of its force, by being transmitted through a number of successive individuals and generations; so that whatever might have been its original credibility, that credibility they pronounce to have undergone a very serious reduction. "The diminution of evidence by this species of transmission may," says Laplace," be compared to the extinction of

light by the interposition of several pieces of glass. A small number of pieces will be sufficient to render an object entirely invisible, which a single piece allowed to be seen very distinctly."*

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Now, I can easily admit that if the report

any fact were to be transmitted through twenty individuals, in different countries, and in regular succession, and we ourselves were to receive the account from the twentieth witness alone, a very serious degradation of probability might have taken place, and our reliance upon the reality of the fact would necessarily be reduced in proportion to the circumstances of the case. The insulated testimony of some tenth transmitter of a wondrous tale, however credible in itself, can never be counted of equal certainty with that of the original witness or agent in the transaction. But if the person who communicates the fact in question to us, can refer us back to the person from whom he himself received the account, and we could thus pass from country to country, and consult the whole series of witnesses, till we arrived at the source and fountain of the report itself, the uniformity of their several testimonies would, in that case, materially strengthen our belief, and the probability of the fact would suffer no diminution whatever. If an inhabitant of

* Edin. Rev. 1814; No. XLVI. p. 325.

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