discourses, but in epistolary writings, and those sometimes addressed to particular and intimate friends, to whom the mind naturally opens itself with the greatest freedom, surely no candid and equitable judge would lightly believe them to be all counterfeit ; or would imagine, without strong proof, that persons who breathe such exalted sentiments of virtue and piety, should be guilty of any notorious wickedness; and in proportion to the degree of enormity and aggravation attending such a supposed crime, it may justly be expected, that the evidence of their having committed it, should be unanswerably strong and convincing.

Now, it is most certain, on the principles laid down above, that if the testimony of the apostles was false, they must have acted as detestable and villanous a part, as one can easily conceive. To be found (as the apostle with his usual energy expresses it) false witnesses of God* in any single instance, and solemnly to declare him miraculously to have done, what we know in our own consciences was never done at all, would be an audacious degree of impiety, to which none but the most abandoned of mankind could arrive.

Yet, if the testimony of the apostles was false, as we have proved, they could not be themselves mistaken in it, this must have been their conduct, and that, not in one single instance only, but in a thousand. Their life must, in effect, be one continued and perpetual scene of perjury; and all the most solemn actions of it, (in which they were speaking to God or speaking of him as the God and Father of Christ, from whom they received their mission and powers) must be a most profane and daring insult on all the acknowledged perfections of his nature.

And the inhumanity of such a conduct would, on the whole, have been equal to its impiety; for it was deceiving men in their most important interests, and persuading them to venture their whole future happiness on the power and fidelity of one, whom, on this supposition, they knew to have been an impostor, and justly to have suffered a capital punishment for his crimes.

It would have been great guilt, to have given the hearts and devotions of men so wrong a turn, even though they had found magistrates ready to espouse and establish, yea, and to enforce the religion they taught. But to labour to propagate it in the midst of the most vigorous and severe opposition from them, must equally enhance the

guilt and folly of the undertaking for, by this means, they made themselves accessary to the ruin of thousands; and all the calamities, which fell on such proselytes, or even on the remotest descendants, for the sake of Christianity, would be, in a great measure, chargeable on these first preachers of it. The blood of honest, yea, and (supposing them, as you must, to have been involuntarily deceived) of pious, worthy, ` and heroic persons, who might otherwise have been the greatest blessings to the public, would, in effect, be crying for vengeance against them; and the distresses of the widows and orphans, which those martyrs might leave behind them, would join to swell the account.

So that, on the whole, the guile of those malefactors, who are from time to time the victims of public justice, even for robbery, murder, or treason, is small, when compared with that which we have now been supposing; and, corrupt as human nature is, it appears to me utterly improbable, that twelve men should be found, I will not say in one little nation, but even on the whole *face of the earth, who could be capable of entering into so black a confederacy, on any terms whatsoever.

And now, in this view of the case, make a

serious pause, and compare with it, what we have just been saying of the character of the apostles of Jesus, so far as an indifferent person could conjecture it from their writings; and then say, whether you can in your hearts believe them to have been these abandoned wretches, at once the reproach and astonishment of Mankind? You cannot surely believe such things of any, and much less of them; unless it shall appear, they were in some peculiar circumstances of strong temptation; and what those circumstances could be, it is difficult even for imagination to conceive.

But history is so far from suggesting any unthought-of fact to help our imagination on this head, that it bears strongly the contrary way ; and hardly any part of my work is easier, than to show,

3. "That they were under no temptation to forge a story of this kind, or to publish it to the world, knowing it to be false."

They could reasonably expect no gain, no reputation by it: but, on the contrary, supposing it an imposture, they must, with the most prdinary share of prudence, have foreseen infamy and ruin, as the certain consequences of attempting it. For the grand foundation of their scheme

was, that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified at Jerusalem by the Jewish rulers, was the Son of God, and the Lord of all things. I appeal to your consciences, whether this looks at all like the contrivance of artful and designing men. It was evidently charging upon the princes of their country the most criminal and aggravated murder: indeed, all things considered, the most enormous act of wickedness, which the sun had ever seen. They might, therefore, depend upon it, that these rulers would immediately employ all their art and power, to confute their testimony and to destroy their persons. Accordingly, one of them was presently stoned,* and another quickly after beheaded,† and most of the rest were scattered abroad into strange cities, where they would be sure to be received with great prejudices raised against them amongst the Jews, by reports from Jerusalem, and vastly

*Acts vii. 59.

Acts viii. 1, 4. xi. 19.

+ Acts xii. 2.

I do not here mention Philo Judæus, as speaking of "an embassy sent from the Jews in his early days, to their brethren in all parts of the world, exhorting them to resist the progress of Christianity." For though Bishop Atterbury asserts, that there is such a passage, (Serm. vol. i. page 117) I have never been able to find, or to