One way of doing so, is by rash and inconsiderate vows; for a. vow, being a promise made solemnly to God, partakes of the nature of an oath. And there may possibly be sometimes good reasons for entering into this kind of engagement. But vowing to do what there is no use of doing, is trifling with our Creator: making unlawful vows, is directly telling him, we will disobey him: making such without necessity, as are difficult to keep, is leading ourselves into temptation: and, indeed, making any, without much thought and prudent advice first, usually proves an unhappy snare. One vow we have all made, and were bound to make, that is our baptism, which includes every real good resolution. That, therefore, let us carefully keep and frequently ratify; and we shall scarce have occasion to make any more*."

This truly is genuine Christian virtue, in the particular to which it belongs. The whole of our duties. we shall find to be as much founded on views of eternal happiness to ourselves. What has infidelity to give in exchange for maxims so noble. Infidelity would root out all Christian duties; moral duties would cease to be binding that moment when the duties of Christianity should cease to be, from the sense of them, the ruling duties of mankind. How wretched the character of that upstart philosophy that would supersede and render abortive the obligations of those duties-that would instil principles of repugnance to a faith which is the guardian, as it is the source of all the delightful emotions of a happy mind! How wretched the character of that philosophy that would instil only prin

* Lectures.

ciples, the results of which, seen in the consequences of human actions, could be nothing but vice, loathsome diseases, and that disregard to truth, against which the enlightened Secker wielded the force of his vigorous pen!

Why will men not believe? Have the writings of Infidels confounded them entirely? I will submit to those miserable men who have too docilely listened to the Tindalls, and the Collinses, and the Morgans, and the Voltaires, and the Paines examples, of a reasoning, upon the whole, the best conceived, and most irrefragable I ever met with in divinity, from the liberal Bishop of Llandaff.* "No two of the evangelists, yout observe, agree in reciting, exactly in the same words, the written inscription which was put over Christ when he was crucified.-I admit that there is an unessential verbal difference; and are you certain that there was not a verbal difference in the inscriptions themselves?-One was written in Hebrew, another in Greek, another in Latin; and though they had all the same meaning, yet it is probable, that, if two men had translated the Hebrew and Latin into Greek, there would have been a verbal difference between their translations. You have rendered yourself famous by writing a book called-The Rights of Man:-had you been guillotined by Robespierre, with this title, written in French, English, and German, and affixed to the guillotine-Thomas Paine, of America author of the Rights of Man-and had four persons, some of whom had seen the execution, and the rest had heard of it from eye-witnesses, written short accounts of your * Apology for the Bible.

+ Thomas Paine.

-- ano

life twenty years or more after your death, and one had said the inscription was-This is Thomas Paine, the author of The Rights of Man ther, The author of The Rights of Man-a third, This is the author of The Rights of Man-and a fourth, Thomas Paine, of America, the author of The Rights of Man-would any man of common sense have doubted, on account of this disagreement, the veracity of the authors in writing your life?" The only one," you tell us, "of the men called apostles, who appears to have been near the spot where Jesus was crucified, was Peter."-This your assertion is not

true

we do not know that Peter was present at the crucifixion; but we do know that John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was present; for Jesus spoke to him from the cross.-You go on, "But why should we believe Peter, convicted by his own account of perjury, in swearing that he knew not Jesus?" I will tell you why-because Peter sincerely repented of the wickedness into which he had been betrayed, through fear for his life, and suffered martyrdom in attestation of the truth of the Christian religion.

"But the evangelists disagree, you say, not only as to the superscription on the cross, but as to the time of the crucifixion, Mark saying it was at the third hour (nine in the morning), and John at the sixth hour twelve, as you suppose, at noon.' Various solutions have been given of this difficulty, none of which satisfied Doctor Middleton, much less can it be expected that any of them should satisfy you; but there is a solution not noticed by him, in which many judicious

men have acquiesced-That John, writing his gospel in Asia, used the Roman method of computing time; which was the same as our own; so that by the sixth hour, when Jesus was condemned, we are to understand six o'clock in the morning; the intermediate time from six to nine, when he was crucified, being employed in preparing for the crucifixion. But if this difficulty should be still esteemed insuperable, it does not follow that it will always remain so: and if it should, the main point, the crucifixion of Jesus, will not be affected thereby.

"I cannot, in this place, omit remarking some circumstances attending the crucifixion, which are so natural, that we might have wondered if they had not occurred. Of all the disciples of Jesus, John was beloved by him with a peculiar degree of affection: and, as kindness produces kindness, there can be little doubt that the regard was reciprocal. Now whom should we expect to be the attendants of Jesus in his last suffering?-Whom but John the friend of his heart? Whom but his mother, whose soul was now pierced through by the sword of sorrow, which Simeon had foretold-Whom but those, who had been attached to him through life; who, having been healed by him of their infirmities, were impelled by gratitude to minister to him of their substance, to be attentive to all his wants? These were the persons whom we should have expected to have attended his execution; and these were there. To whom would an expiring son, of the best affections, recommend a poor, and, probably, a widowed mother, but to his warmest friend?-And this

did Jesus.-Unmindful of the extremity of his own torture, and anxious to alleviate the burden of her sorrows, and to protect her old age from future want and misery, he said to his beloved disciple-Behold thy mother! and from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.' I own to you, that such instances as these, of the conformity of events to our probable expectation, are to me genuine marks of the simplicity and truth of the Gospels; and far outweigh a thousand little objections, arising from our ignorance of manners, times, and circumstances, or from our incapacity to comprehend the means used by the Supreme Being in the moral government of his creatures.

"St. Matthew mentions several miracles which attended our Saviour's crucifixion-the darkness which overspread the land-the rending of the veil of the temple-an earthquake which rent the rocks-and the resurrection of many saints, and their going into the holy city' Such,' you say, is the account which this dashing writer of the book of Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other books.' This is not accurately expressed; Matthew is supported by Mark and Luke, with respect to two of the miracles-the darkness-and the rending of the veil ;and their omission of the others does not prove that they were either ignorant of them, or disbelieved them. I think it idle to pretend to say positively what influenced them to mention only two miracles; they probably thought them sufficient to convince any person, as they convinced the centurion, that Jesus' was a righteous man' the Son of God*." * Apology for the Bible.