mouth of the apostles and disciples. The further consideration of these holy penmen will fall under another part of this discourse.

III. It will be sufficient to observe here, that in the age which succeeded the apostles, many of their immediate disciples sent, or carried in person, the books of the four evangelists, which had been written by apostles, or at least approved by them, to most of the churches which they had planted in the different parts of the world. This was done with so much diligence, that when Pantænus, a man of great learning and piety, had travelled into India for the propagation of Christianity, about the year of our Lord 200, he found among that remote people the Gospel of St. Matthew, which, upon his return from that country, he brought with him to Alexandria. This Gospel is generally supposed to have been left in those parts by St. Bartholomew, the apostle of the Indies, who probably carried it with him before the writings of the three other evangelists were published.

IV. That the history of our Saviour, as recorded by the evangelists, was the same with that which had been before delivered by the apostles and disciples, will further appear in the prosecution of this discourse, and may be gathered from the following considerations.

V. Had these writings differed from the sermons of the first planters of Christianity, either in history or doctrine, there is no question but they would have been rejected by those churches which they had already formed. But so consistent and uniform was the relation of the apostles, that these histories appeared to be nothing else but their tradition and oral attestations made fixed and permanent. Thus was the fame of our Saviour, which in so few years had gone through the whole earth, confirmed and perpetuated by such records as would preserve the traditionary account of him to afterages; and rectify it, if, at any time, by passing through several generations, it might drop any part that was material, or contract anything that was false or fictitious.

VI. Accordingly we find the same Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin, who had wrought many miracles in Palestine, who was crucified, rose again, and ascended into heaven; I say, the same Jesus Christ had been preached, and was worshipped, in Germany, France, Spain, and Great Britain, in Parthia, Media, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Asia, and

Pamphylia, in Italy, Egypt, Afric, and beyond Cyrene, India, and Persia, and, in short, in all the islands and provinces that are visited by the rising or setting sun. The same account of our Saviour's life and doctrine was delivered by thousands of preachers, and believed in thousands of places, who all, as fast as it could be conveyed to them, received the same account in writing from the four evangelists.

VII. Irenæus to this purpose very aptly remarks, that those barbarous nations, who, in his time, were not possessed of the written Gospels, and had only learned the history of our Saviour from those who had converted them to Christianity before the Gospels were written, had among them the same accounts of our Saviour, which are to be met with in the four evangelists. An uncontestable proof of the harmony and concurrence between the Holy Scripture and the tradition of the churches in those early times of Christianity.

VIII. Thus we see what opportunities the learned and inquisitive heathens had of informing themselves of the truth of our Saviour's history, during the three first centuries, especially as they lay nearer one than another to the fountain head: beside which, there were many uncontroverted traditions, records of Christianity, and particular histories, that then threw light into these matters, but are now entirely lost, by which, at that time, any appearance of contradiction, or seeming difficulties, in the history of the evangelists, were fully cleared up and explained: though we meet with fewer appearances of this nature in the history of our Saviour, as related by the four evangelists, than in the accounts of any other person, published by such a number of different historians, who lived at so great a distance from the present age.

IX. Among those records which are lost, and were of great use to the primitive Christians, is the letter to Tiberius, which I have already mentioned; that of Marcus Aurelius, which I shall take notice of hereafter; the writings of Hegesippus, who had drawn down the history of Christianity to his own time, which was not beyond the middle of the second century; the genuine Sibylline oracles, which in the first ages of the church were easily distinguished from the spurious; the records preserved in particular churches, with many other of the same nature.

SECTION VII.

I. The sight of miracles in those ages a further confirmation of Pagan philosophers in the Christian faith.

II. The credibility of such miracles.

III. A particular instance.

IV. Martyrdom, why considered as a standing miracle.

V. Primitive Christians thought many of the martyrs were supported by a miraculous power.

VI. Proved from the nature of their sufferings.

VII. How martyrs further induced the Pagans to embrace Christianity.

I. THERE were other means, which I find had a great influence on the learned of the three first centuries, to create and confirm in them the belief of our blessed Saviour's history, which ought not to be passed over in silence. The first was, the opportunity they enjoyed of examining those miracles, which were on several occasions performed by Christians, and appeared in the church, more or less, during these first ages of Christianity. These had great weight with the men I am now speaking of, who, from learned Pagans, became fathers of the church; for they frequently boast of them in their writings, as attestations given by God himself to the truth of their religion.

II. At the same time that these learned men declare how disingenuous, base, and wicked it would be, how much beneath the dignity of philosophy, and, contrary to the precepts of Christianity, to utter falsehoods or forgeries in the support of a cause, though never so just in itself, they confidently assert this miraculous power, which then subsisted in the church, nay, tell us that they themselves had been eye-witnesses of it at several times, and in several instances; nay, appeal to the heathens themselves for the truth of several facts they relate, nay, challenge them to be present at their assemblies, and satisfy themselves, if they

:

1 Such was the general opinion when our author wrote. The fact will now be denied, or questioned, at least. However, that the early writers of the church believed the existence of miracles in their days, is not to be denied and such belief itself is not to be accounted for but on the supposition that many and great miracles had been unquestionably wrought by Christ and his apostles. The very credulity of the Fathers, then, if not the certainty of their reports, is an argument for the truth of Christianity.

doubt of it; nay, we find that Pagan authors have in some instances confessed this miraculous power.

III. The letter of Marcus Aurelius, whose army was preserved by a refreshing shower, at the same time that his enemies were discomfited by a storm of lightning, and which the heathen historians themselves allow to have been supernatural, and the effect of magic: I say, this letter, which ascribed this unexpected assistance to the prayers of the Christians, who then served in the army, would have been thought an unquestionable testimony of the miraculous power I am speaking of, had it been still preserved. It is sufficient for me in this place to take notice, that this was one of those miracles which had its influence on the learned converts, because it is related by Tertullian, and the very letter appealed to. When these learned men saw sickness and frenzy cured, the dead raised, the oracles put to silence, the demons and evil spirits forced to confess themselves no gods, by persons who only made use of prayer and adjurations in the name of their crucified Saviour; how could they doubt of this Saviour's power on the like occasions, as represented to them by the traditions of the church, and the writings of the evangelists ?

IV. Under this head, I cannot omit that which appears to me a standing miracle in the three first centuries, I mean that amazing and supernatural courage or patience, which was shown by innumerable multitudes of martyrs, in those slow and painful torments that were inflicted on them. I cannot conceive a man placed in the burning iron chair at Lyons, amid the insults and mockeries of a crowded amphitheatre, and still keeping his seat; or stretched upon a grate of iron, over coals of fire, and breathing out his soul among the exquisite sufferings of such a tedious execution, rather than renounce his religion, or blaspheme his Saviour. Such trials seem to me above the strength of human nature, and able to over-bear duty, reason, faith, conviction, nay, and the most absolute certainty of a future state. Humanity, unassisted in an extraordinary manner, must have shaken off the present pressure, and have delivered itself out of such a dreadful distress, by any means that could have been suggested to it. We can easily imagine, that many persons, in so good a cause, might have laid down their lives at the gibbet, the stake, or the block; but to expire leisurely among

the most exquisite tortures, when they might come out of them, even by a mental reservation, or an hypocrisy which was not without a possibility of being followed by repentance and forgiveness, has something in it, so far beyond the force and natural strength of mortals, that one cannot but think there was some miraculous power to support the sufferer.

V. We find the church of Smyrna, in that admirable letter which gives an account of the death of Polycarp their beloved bishop, mentioning the cruel torments of other early martyrs for Christianity, are of opinion that our Saviour stood by them in a vision, and personally conversed with them, to give them strength and comfort during the bitterness of their long-continued agonies; and we have the story of a young man, who, having suffered many tortures, escaped with life, and told his fellow-Christians, that the pain of them had been rendered tolerable, by the presence of an angel who stood by him, and wiped off the tears and sweat, which ran down his face whilst he lay under his sufferings. We are assured, at least, that the first martyr for Christianity was encouraged in his last moments by a vision of that Divine person, for whom he suffered, and into whose presence he was then hastening.

VI. Let any man calmly lay his hand upon his heart, and after reading these terrible conflicts in which the ancient martyrs and confessors were engaged, when they passed through such new inventions and varieties of pain, as tired their tormentors; and ask himself, however zealous and sincere he is in his religion, whether under such acute and lingering tortures he could still have held fast his integrity, and have professed his faith to the last, without a supernatural assistance of some kind or other. For my part, when I consider that it was not an unaccountable obstinacy in a single man, or in any particular set of men, in some extraordinary juncture; but that there were multitudes of each sex, of every age, of different countries and conditions, who for near 300 years together made this glorious confession of their faith, in the midst of tortures, and in the hour of death: I must conclude, that they were either of another make than men are at present, or that they had such miraculous supports as were peculiar to those times of Christianity, when