Part 4.
PART 4.
THE preceding arguments recommend themselves to the common sense of thinking heathens, and the conscience of reasonable Deists; as being all taken from those two amazing volumes which are open to, and legible by, all, the world and man. The following are taken from a third volume, the Bible, despised by the wits of the age, merely because they study and understand it even less than the other two. “The Bible!” says one of them with a smile, “save yourself the trouble of producing arguments drawn from that old legend, unless you first demonstrate its authenticity by the noble faculty to which you appeal in these pages.” For the sake of such objectors, I here premise, by way of digression, a few rational arguments to evince, as far as my contracted plan will allow, the Divine authority of the Scriptures.
1. The sacred penmen, the prophets, and apostles, were holy, excellent men, and would not,—artless, illiterate men, and therefore could not,—lay the horrible scheme of deluding mankind. The hope of gain did not influence them, for they were self-denying men, that left all to follow a Master who “had not where to lay his head;” and whose grand initiating maxim was, “Except a man forsake all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple,” They were so disinterested that they secured nothing on earth but hunger and nakedness, stocks and prisons, racks and tortures; which, indeed, were all that they could or did expect, in consequence of Christ’s express declarations. Neither was a desire of honour the motive of their actions; for their Lord himself was treated with the utmost contempt, and had more than once assured them that they should certainly share the same fate: beside, they were humble men, not above working as mechanics for a coarse maintenance; and so little desirous of human regard, that they exposed to the world the meanness of their birth and occupations, their great ignorance and scandalous falls.
Add to this, that they were so many, and lived at such distance of time and place from each other, that had they been impostors, it would have been impracticable for them to contrive and carry on a forgery without being detected. And as they neither would nor could deceive the world, so they neither could nor would be deceived themselves: for they were days, months, and years, eye and ear witnesses of the things which they relate; and when they had not the fullest evidence of important facts, they insisted upon new proofs, and even upon sensible demonstrations; as, for instance, Thomas, in the matter of our Lord’s resurrection, John 20:25. And, to leave us no room to question their sincerity, most of them joyfully sealed the truth of their doctrines with their own blood. Did so many and such marks of veracity ever meet in any other authors?
2. But even while they lived, they confirmed their testimony by a variety of miracles, wrought in divers places, and for a number of years; sometimes before thousands of their enemies, as the miracles of Christ and his disciples; sometimes before hundreds of thousands, as those of Moses. These miracles were so well known and attested, that when both Christ and Moses appealed to their authenticity, before their bitterest opposers, mentioning the persons upon whom, as well as the particular times when, and the places where, they had been performed; the facts were never denied, but passed over in silence, or maliciously attributed to the prince of the devils. By such a pitiful slander as this, Porphyry, Hierocles, Celsus, and Julian the apostate, those learned and inveterate enemies of Christianity, endeavoured (as the Pharisees had done before them) to sap the argument founded upon the miracles of Christ and his disciples. So sure then as God would never have displayed his arm, in the most astonishing manner, for the support of imposture,f55 the sacred penmen had their commission from the Almighty, and their writings are his lively oracles.
3. Reason itself dictates, that nothing but the plainest matter of fact could induce so many thousands of prejudiced and persecuting Jews to embrace the humbling, self-denying doctrine of the cross, which they so much despised and abhorred. Nothing but the clearest evidence, arising from undoubted truth, could make multitudes of lawless, luxurious heathens receive, follow, and transmit to posterity the doctrines and writings of the apostles; especially at a time when the vanity of their pretensions to miracles and the gift of tongues could be so easily discovered, had they been impostors,—at a time when the profession of Christianity exposed persons of all ranks to the greatest contempt, and most imminent danger. In this respect the case of the primitive Christians widely differed from that of Mohammed’s followers: for those who adhered to the warlike, violent impostor, saved their lives and properties, or attained to honour, by their new, easy, and flesh-pleasing religion: but those who devoted themselves to the meek, self-denying, crucified Jesus, were frequently spoiled of their goods, and cruelly put to death; or if they escaped with their lives, were looked upon as the very dregs of mankind.
Add to this, that some of the most profound parts of the Scriptures were addressed to the inhabitants of polite Greece and triumphant Rome;f56 among whom philosophy and literature, with the fine arts and sciences, were in the highest perfection; and who, consequently, were less liable to be the dupes of forgery and imposture. On the contrary, gross ignorance overspread those countries, where Mohammed first broached his absurd opinions, and propagated them with the sword: a sure sign this, that the sacred writers did not, like that impostor, avail themselves of the ignorance, weakness, and helplessness of their followers, to impose falsehood upon them.
4. When the authenticity of the miracles was attested by thousands of living witnesses, religious rites were instituted and performed by hundreds of thousands, agreeable to Scripture injunctions, in order to perpetuate that authenticity. And these solemn ceremonies have ever since been kept up in all parts of the world; the passover by the Jews, in remembrance of Moses’ miracles in Egypt; and the eucharist by Christians, as a memorial of Christ’s death and the miracles that accompanied it, some of which are recorded by Phlegon the Trallian, a heathen historian.
5. The Scriptures have not only the external sanction of miracles, but the internal stamp of the omniscient God, by a variety of prophecies, some of which have already been most exactly confirmed by the event predicted; witness the rise and fall of the four grand monarchies, according to Daniel’s prophecy, chap. ii and vii; and the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, foretold by Christ, Matthew 24:2, while others are every day fulfilled in the face of infidels, particularly the persecution of the real disciples of Christ in our own times, as well as in all ages; see Matthew 10:22, 35; John 15:30; and Galatians 4:29; and the present miserable state of the Jews, so exactly described by Moses above three thousand years ago; see Deuteronomy 28:65.
6. Sometimes the plainest prophecies, the most public miracles, and the annals of kingdoms, well known when these books were first received, wonderfully concur to demonstrate their authenticity, Take one instance out of many. A prophet out of Judah, above three hundred years before the event, thus foretold the pollution of Jeroboam’s altar at Bethel, before Jeroboam himself, who was attended by his priests, his courtiers, and, no doubt, a vast number of idolatrous worshippers: “O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, who shall burn men’s bones upon thee:” and “this is the sign: behold,” this very day, “the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it scattered.” King Jeroboam, inflamed with anger, “stretched forth his hand against the man of God, saying,” to his guards, “Lay hold on him:” but his extended hand “was dried up so that he could not pull it in again to him;” the rending of the altar and scattering of the fire instantly took place; and the capital prophecy was exactly fulfilled by pious King Josiah, as you may see by comparing 1 Kings 13:1, &c, with 2 Kings 23:15, &c. Can we reasonably suppose that books, containing accounts of such public events, would have been received as Divine by a divided people, if their authenticity had not been confirmed by indubitable matter of fact? Nay, is it not as absurd to assert it, as it would be to affirm, that the offices for the fifth of November and the thirtieth of January, were forged by crafty priests; and that the Papists, Puritans, and Royalists of the last century, agreed to impose upon the world the history of the gunpowder plot and of King Charles’ decollation, with which those parts of our liturgy are so inseparably connected?
7. This scattered, despised people, the irreconcilable enemies of the Christians, keep with amazing care the Old Testament,f57 full of the prophetic history of Jesus Christ, and by that means afford the world a striking proof that the New Testament is true; and Christians in their turn show, that the Old Testament is abundantly confirmed and explained by the New. The earl of Rochester, the great wit of the last century, was so struck with this proof, that upon reading the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, with floods of penitential tears he lamented his former infidelity, and warmly embraced the faith which he had so publicly ridiculed.
8. To say nothing of the venerable antiquity and wonderful preservation of those books, some of which are by far the most ancient in the world; to pass over the inimitable simplicity and true sublimity of their style, they carry with them such characters of truth, as command the respect of every unprejudiced reader.
They open to us the mystery of the creation, the nature of God, angels, and man, the immortality of the soul,f58 the end for which we were made, the origin and connection of moral and natural evil, the vanity of this world and the glory of the next. There we see inspired shepherds, tradesmen, and fishermen, surpassing as much the greatest philosophers, as these did the herd of mankind, both in meekness of wisdom and sublimity of doctrine. There we admire the purest morality in the world, agreeable to the dictates of sound reason, confirmed by the witness which God has placed for himself in our breast, and exemplified in the lives of men of like passions with ourselves. There we discover a vein of ecclesiastical history and theological truth, consistently running through a collection of sixty-six different books, written by various authors, in different languages, during the space of above fifteen hundred years. There we find, as in a deep and pure spring, all the genuine drops and streams of spiritual knowledge which can possibly be met with in the largest libraries. There the workings of the human heart are described, in a manner that demonstrates the inspiration of the Searcher of hearts. There we have a particular account of all our spiritual maladies, with their various symptoms, and the method of a certain cure; a cure that has been witnessed by millions of martyrs and departed saints, and is now enjoyed by thousands of good men, who would account it an honour to seal the truth of the Scriptures with their own blood. There you meet with the noblest strains of penitential and joyous devotion, adapted to the dispositions and states of all travellers to Sion: and there you read those awful threatenings and cheering promises which are daily fulfilled in the consciences of men, to the admiration of believers, and the astonishment of attentive infidels.
9. The wonderful efficacy of the Scriptures is another proof that they are of God. When they are faithfully opened by his ministers, and powerfully applied by his Spirit, they “wound and heal,” they “kill and make alive,” they alarm the careless, turn or enrage the wicked, direct the lost, support the tempted, strengthen the weak, comfort mourners, and nourish pious souls. As the woman of Samaria said of Jesus, “Come, see a man that told me all that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” a good man can say of the Bible, “Come, see a book that told me all that was in my heart, and acquainted me with the various trials and dangers I have met with in my spiritual travels: a book where I have found those truths, which, like a Divinely tempered sword, have cut my way through all the snares and forces of my spiritual adversaries; and by whose directions my soul has happily entered the paradise of Divine and brotherly love: is not this the book of God?”
10. To conclude: It is exceedingly remarkable that the more humble and holy people are, the more they read, admire, and value the Scriptures; and, on the contrary, the more self conceited, worldly minded, and wicked, the more they neglect, despise, and asperse them.
As for the objections which are raised against their perspicuity and consistency, those who are both pious and learned know that they are generally founded on prepossession, and the want of understanding in spiritual things; or on our ignorance of several customs, idioms, and circumstances which were perfectly known when those books were written. Frequently also the immaterial error arises merely from a wrong punctuation, or a mistake of copiers, printers, or translators; as the daily discoveries of pious critics, and ingenuous confessions of unprejudiced inquirers, abundantly prove.
To the preceding arguments, I beg leave to add the following queries: Do not disbelievers, by supposing that the Scriptures are a forged book, and, consequently, that Christianity is a false religion, run upon the very rocks which they seem so afraid of? And may they not be charged with indirectly setting their seal to opinions far more incredible than those which they reject?
(1.) O ye disputers of this world, if ye believe that Moses and Jesus Christ, St. Peter and St. Paul, publicly worked sham miracles for years, in various cities and countries, before thousands of their sharp-sighted opposers, without being ever detected in any of their tricks; might you not as reasonably believe that thousands of shrewd men were once turned into stupid asses?
(2.) If you believe that the Gospel is the production of human deceit, and yet, that in the prodigious number of apostates once concerned in carrying on the amazing villainy, such as Judas, Demas, Simon Magus, Alexander the coppersmith, who did St. Paul so much evil, &c, not one was ever found that would prove the forgery: might you not as reasonably believe, that if Mr. Wilkes, and all his friends, knew of a gross villainy carried on by the ministry, in order to turn the kingdom upside down; neither he, nor any one of them, could ever be prevailed upon to disclose and prove it to the world?f59
(3.) You believe that the miracles and resurrection of Christ, together with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, were nothing but enthusiastical or knavish pretensions; and yet you are forced to grant, that thousands of Jews, strongly attached to their religion, amazingly averse to that of Jesus, and guilty of persecuting him unto death, took him openly for their Saviour a few weeks after they had seen him publicly scourged; and in the very city in sight of which he had just been crucified between two thieves. Now is not this as absurd as to believe, that if a few fishermen cried up the last person hanged in London for a notorious forgery; and if they affirmed that he was the Son of God, appealing to a great number of miracles supposed to have been wrought by him in the squares and hospitals of the metropolis, and especially in St. Paul’s church yard; and maintaining that some of them had been acknowledged genuine by the great council of the nation;f60 they could, by such notorious lies, engage thousands of citizens, and some aldermen, to put all their trust in the villain hanged at their special request?
(4.) You believe that Christianity is a gross imposture; and yet you cannot deny that thousands of learned Romans and wise Greeks, who agreed to despise the Jews above all other men, took for their Saviour that very Jesus, of whom his own countrymen had been ashamed, and whom they had crucified as an impostor. Is not this as absurd as to believe, that thousands of wise Englishmen, and sensible Frenchmen, could be induced by the absurd tale of two or three Hottentots, to worship a certain Hottentot whom the whole nation of Hottentots had condemned to be hanged, as being more worthy of an ignominious death than the bloody ringleader of a seditious mob?
(5.) If you believe, with one of the popes, that the history of Christ is “a mere fable,” and that there never was such an extraordinary person, you believe that the heathens, the Jews, and the Mohammedans have agreed with the Christians, their sworn enemies, to carry on the most amazing imposture. For Pliny, Tacitus, Lucian, and Suetonius, heathen authors, who lived soon after Christ, make express mention of him; as do also Mohammed, many of the rabbis, and Julian the emperor, that powerful and crafty apostate, who not only never denied Christ’s existence, but openly acknowledged that Paul, Mark, Matthew, and Peter were the authors of the Gospels and Epistles which bear their name. Now is not this as ridiculous as to believe, that the pope, the mufti, and the inquisitors, have laid their heads together with Messrs. Voltaire Hume, and Rousseau, to favour a forgery subversive of popery, Mohammedanism, and infidelity?
(6.) If you deny the authenticity of the four Gospels, which are the only ancient histories that we have of our saviour, and yet believe that there was such a personage as Jesus Christ, whose fame so spread through the Roman empire, that in less than three hundred and thirty years he was not only reckoned superior to the Roman emperor, but to Jupiter himself; and that, nevertheless, not one historian, during all that time, gave the world a particular account of him, [which must be the case, if the four Gospels are a forgery,] might you not as reasonably suppose, that if a blazing meteor appeared in our day, and eclipsed the stars, the moon, and the sun itself, no astronomer for several centuries would take particular notice of so wonderful a phenomenon?
(7.) If the Gospel is a delusion, you believe that St. Paul, who was a man of sense, learning, and intrepidity, was seduced by—nobody, to preach for near thirty years with astonishing zeal and matchless hardships, an imposture, against the abettors of which he just before “breathed” nothing but “threatenings and slaughter.” Would it be half so absurd to believe that Mr. Wilkes has suddenly commenced the minister’s advocate, goes through the kingdom to recommend the present administration, and accounts it an honour to be mobbed, whipped, or stoned in every borough for his excessive attachment to the king?
(8.) The instantaneous conversion of thousands was wrought by means of public appeals to notorious matter of fact. Hear the language of the apostles to the Jews: “This ye yourselves know,” Acts 2:12. “Ye know the thing done through all Judea,” Acts 10:37, 38. “The king knoweth these things.” “This thing was not done in a corner,” Acts 26:26. Now if Christianity is not founded upon indubitable facts, might you not as well believe, that twelve men broke loose from bedlam, brought last year thousands of Deists over to Christianity, by saying to them,” Ye know”— what you are perfect strangers to; that is, “Ye know” that we are a pack of bedlamites!
(9.) If the Gospel is forged, you believe that the Corinthians, &c, handed down to posterity, as a sacred treasure, epistles where St. Paul mentions their amazing conversion from gross immoralities; congratulates them about the spiritual or miraculous gifts, in which they abounded, 1 Corinthians 12:1, and gives them particular directions how to use the “gift of tongues” to edification; when yet they were totally unacquainted with any such things. Might you not with equal wisdom believe that, If Mr. Wilkes wrote to the house of commons a congratulatory epistle about their having received, by the laying on of his hands, the power of speaking Turkish, Arabic, and Chinese, they would carefully transmit his letter to the next generation as a Divine performance; and that none of Mr. Wilkes’ enemies would ever expose the impudence of so absurd a pretension?
(10.) If you say that the apostles were fools, you must believe that foolish fishermen laid a scheme with so much wisdom, and carried it on with so much art, as to deceive multitudes of Greeks noted for their acuteness, and numbers of Romans famous for their prudence. Might you not as well believe that twelve poor, unarmed idiots once combined to take the strongest towns in Europe, and accomplished their strange design by means that strike the profoundest politicians with astonishment?
(11.) If you affirm, that the apostles were cheats and liars, you run into as great a difficulty; for you must believe that the greatest knaves that ever existed, contrary to their own principles and advantage, went through the world, exposing themselves to the greatest hardships and severest tortures unto death, to recommend, both by their example and precepts, the strictest piety toward God, and the most scrupulous honesty toward man; perpetually denouncing eternal destruction to cheats and hypocrites, and the torments of a “lake that burneth with fire and brimstone to every one who loveth or maketh a lie.” Would it be more absurd to believe that the twelve greatest epicures in England have, for a course of years, fulfilled a mutual agreement of preaching, night and day, abstinence and fasting through the three kingdoms, merely to have the pleasure of starving to death for their pains?
(12.) To conclude: if the Gospel (and consequently the Scripture) is an imposture, you suppose that some poor Galilean fishermen, only by means of an absurd lie, which they told without wit, and wrote without elegance, foiled the multitude of the Jewish and Pagan priests, who had prejudice, custom, profession, learning, oratory, wealth, laws, governors, and emperors on their side; yea, and truth also, upon your principles, at least when they decried the Gospel as a cheat. Would it be more ridiculous to believe that David killed Goliah with a grain of sand, and cut off his head with a spire of grass; or that our sailors sink men of war with a puff of breath, while our soldiers batter down ramparts with snow balls? O ye sons of worldly wisdom, drop your unjust prejudices; candidly weigh both sides of the question, and you will soon see, that, in rejecting the Gospel as an imposture, you display a far greater degree of credulity than we do in cordially receiving it.
After this short defence of the oracles of God, and this little attack upon the persons who suspect their authenticity, I hope I may (consistently with