pleasures of this life, renounced all the views of ambition, engaged in an uninterrupted course of severities, and exposed themselves to public hatred and contempt, to sufferings of all kinds, and to death itself.

III. Of this sort we may reckon those three early converts to Christianity, who each of them was 1 a member of a senate famous for its wisdom and learning. Joseph the Arimathean was of the Jewish Sanhedrim, Dionysius of the Athenian Areopagus, and Flavius Clemens of the Roman senate; nay, at the time of his death, consul of Rome. These three were so thoroughly satisfied of the truth of the Christian religion, that the first of them, according to all the reports of antiquity, died a martyr for it; as did the second, unless we disbelieve Aristides, his fellow-citizen and contemporary; and the third, as we are informed both by Roman and Christian authors.

IV. Among those innumerable multitudes, who in most of the known nations of the world came over to Christianity at its first appearance, we may be sure there were great numbers of wise and learned men, besides those whose names are in the Christian records, who without doubt took care to examine the truth of our Saviour's history, before they would leave the religion of their country and of their forefathers, for the sake of one that would not only cut them off from the allurements of this world, but subject them to everything terrible or disagreeable in it. Tertullian tells the Roman governors, that their corporations, councils, armies, tribes, companies, the palace, senate, and courts of judicature, were filled with Christians; as Arnobius asserts, that men of the finest parts and learning, orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians, philosophers, despising the sentiments they had been once fond of, took up their rest in the Christian religion.

V. Who can imagine that men of this character did not thoroughly inform themselves of the history of that person, whose doctrines they embraced? for, however consonant to reason his precepts appeared, how good soever were the effects which they produced in the world, nothing could have

fore, to avoid an ungraceful repetition, he omits that after notwithstanding, which regularly requires to be followed by the conjunction, that.

Those three-who each of them was]-carelessly expressed, foreach of whom was.

tempted men to acknowledge him as their God and Saviour, but their being firmly persuaded of the miracles he wrought, and the many attestations of his Divine mission, which were to be met with in the history of his life. This was the ground-work of the Christian religion, and, if this failed, the whole superstructure sunk with it. This point, therefore, of the truth of our Saviour's history, as recorded by the evangelists, is everywhere taken for granted in the writings of those, who from Pagan philosophers became Christian authors, and who, by reason of their conversion, are to be looked upon as of the strongest collateral testimony for the truth of what is delivered concerning our Saviour.

VI. Besides innumerable authors that are lost, we have the undoubted names, works, or fragments of several Pagan philosophers, which show them to have been as learned as any unconverted heathen authors of the age in which they lived. If we look into the greatest nurseries of learning in those ages of the world, we find in Athens, Dionysius, Quadratus, Aristides, Athenagoras; and in Alexandria, Dionysius, Clemens, Ammonius, Arnobius, and Anatolius, to whom we may add Origen; for though his father was a Christian martyr, he became, without all controversy, the most learned and able philosopher of his age, by his education at Alexandria, in that famous seminary of arts and sciences.

SECTION V.

I. The learned Pagans had means and opportunities of informing themselves of the truth of our Saviour's history;

II. From the proceedings,

III. The characters, sufferings,

IV. And miracles of the persons who published it.

V. How these first apostles perpetuated their tradition, by ordaining persons to succeed them.

VI. How their successors in the three first centuries preserved their tradition.

And who, by reason of their conversion, are to be looked upon as of the strongest collateral testimony for the truth of what, &c.] It should either be-as giving the strongest collateral testimony to—or else—whose conversion is to be looked upon as of the strongest collateral testimony, for the truth, &c.-i. e. as an instance of the strongest collateral testimony, that can be brought for the truth.-This way of expression is sometimes used, though very elliptical.

VII. That five generations might derive this tradition from Christ, to the end of the third century.

VIII. Four eminent Christians that delivered it down successively to the year of our Lord 254.

IX. The faith of the four above-mentioned persons, the same with that of the churches of the East, of the West, and of Egypt.

X. Another person added to them who brings us to the year 343, and that many other lists might be added in as direct and short a succession. XI. Why the tradition of the three first centuries, more authentic than that of any other age, proved from the conversation of the primitive Christians.

XII. From the manner of initiating men into their religion.

XIII. From the correspondence between the churches.

XIV. From the long lives of several of Christ's disciples, of which two instances.

I. Ir now, therefore, only remains to consider, whether these learned men had means and opportunities of informing themselves of the truth of our Saviour's history; for unless this point can be made out, their testimonies will appear invalid, and their inquiries ineffectual.

II. As to this point, we must consider, that many thousands had seen the transactions of our Saviour in Judea, and that many hundred thousands had received an account of them from the mouths of those who were actually eye-witnesses. I shall only mention among these eye-witnesses the twelve apostles, to whom we must add St. Paul, who had a particular call to this high office, though many other disciples and followers of Christ had also their share in the publishing this wonderful history. We learn from the ancient records of Christianity, that many of the apostles and disciples made it the express business of their lives, travelled into the remotest parts of the world, and in all places gathered multitudes about them, to acquaint them with the history and doctrines of their crucified Master. And, indeed, were all Christian records of these proceedings entirely lost, as many have been, the effect plainly evinces the truth of them; for how else during the apostles' lives could Christianity have spread itself with such an amazing progress through the several nations of the Roman empire? how could it fly like lightning, and carry conviction with it, from one end of the earth to the other?

III. Heathens, therefore, of every age, sex, and quality, 'Made it that is—the publishing of this wonderful story.—Obscurely expressed.

born in the most different climates, and bred up under the most different institutions, when they saw men of plain sense, without the help of learning, armed with patience and courage, instead of wealth, pomp, or power, expressing in their lives those excellent doctrines of morality, which they taught as delivered to them from our Saviour, averring that they hac seen his miracles during his life, and conversed with him after his death; when, I say, they saw no suspicion of falsehood, treachery, or worldly interest, in their behaviour and conversation, and that they submitted to the most ignominious and cruel deaths, rather than retract their testimony, or even be silent in matters which they were to publish by their Saviour's especial command, there was no reason to doubt of the veracity of those facts which they related, or of the Divine mission in which they were employed.

IV. But even these motives to faith in our Saviour would not have been sufficient to have brought about in so few years such an incredible number of conversions, had not the apostles been able to exhibit still greater proofs of the truths which they taught. A few persons of an odious and despised country could not have filled the world with believers, had they not shown undoubted credentials from the Divine person who sent them on such a message. Accordingly we are assured, that they were invested with the power of working miracles, which was the most short and the most convincing argument that could be produced, and the only one that was adapted to the reason of all mankind, to the capacities of the wise and ignorant, and could overcome every cavil and every prejudice. Who would not believe that our Saviour healed the sick, and raised the dead, when it was published by those who themselves often did the same miracles, in their presence, and in his name! Could any reasonable person imagine, that God Almighty would arm men with such powers to authorize a lie, and establish a religion in the world which was displeasing to him, or that evil spirits would lend them such an effectual assistance to beat down vice and idolatry?

V. When the apostles had formed many assemblies in several parts of the Pagan world, who gave credit to the glad tidings of the gospel, that, upon their departure, the memory of what they had related might not perish, they appointed out of these new converts, men of the best sense, and of the most unblemished lives, to preside over these several

assemblies, and to inculcate without ceasing what they had heard from the mouths of these eye-witnesses.

VI. Upon the death of any of those substitutes to the apostles and disciples of Christ, his place was filled up with some other person of eminence for his piety and learning, and generally a member of the same church, who, after his decease, was followed by another in the same manner, by which means the succession was continued in an uninterrupted line. Irenæus informs us, that every church preserved a catalogue of its bishops in the order that they succeeded one another, and (for an example) produces the catalogue of those who governed the church of Rome in that character, which contains eight or nine persons, though but at a very small remove from the times of the apostles.

Indeed, the lists of bishops, which are come down to us in other churches, are generally filled with greater numbers than one would expect. But the succession was quick in the three first centuries, because the bishop very often ended in the martyr: for when a persecution arose in any place, the first fury of it fell upon this order of holy men, who abundantly testified, by their deaths and sufferings, that they did not undertake these offices out of any temporal views, that they were sincere and satisfied in the belief of what they taught, and that they firmly adhered to what they had received from the apostles, as laying down their lives in the same hope, and upon the same principles. None can be supposed so utterly regardless of their own happiness, as to expire in torment, and hazard their eternity, to support any fables and inventions of their own, or any forgeries of their predecessors who had presided in the same church, and which might have been easily detected by the tradition of that particular church, as well as by the concurring testimony of others. To this purpose, I think it is very remarkable, that there was not a single martyr among those many heretics, who disagreed with the apostolical church, and introduced several wild and absurd notions into the doctrines of Christianity. They durst not stake their present and future happiness on their own chimerical imaginations, and did not only shun persecution, but affirmed that it was unne cessary for their followers to bear their religion through such fiery trials.

VII. We may fairly reckon, that this first age of apostles