Again, the achievement of its propagation, in defiance of the powers and terrors of the world, implied a new energy of personal genius, and other qualities of action, than any concurring in the work before. Lastly, the model of the life of its Founder, in the very description of it, is a work of so much originality and wisdom, as could be the offspring only of consummate powers of invention; though to speak more fairly to the case, it seems, by an intuitive evidence, as if it could never have been even devised, but must have come from the life and reality of some perfect excellence of virtue, impossible to be taken from, or confounded with, the fictions of ingenuity. But the hypothesis sinks under its incredibility. For each of these suppositions of contrivance, being arbitrary, as it certainly is, and unsupported, the climax of them is an extravagance. And if the imbecility of Art is foiled in the hypothesis, the combinations of Accident are too vain to be thought of. The genuine state of the Christian evidence is this: there is unambiguous testimony to its works of miraculous power; there are oracles of prophecy; there are other distinct marks and signs of a divine original within it. And no stock but that of truth could, in one subject, produce them all, or can now account for their existence.

The whole compass and system of the Christian Evidence unquestionably has nothing like it, nor approaching to it, in the Annals of the World.

It is a phenomenon standing alone. I assert this, on the concession of those who have exalted it, beside their intention, by the impotent comparisons through which they have sought to slander and traduce it. For what has been done? Its Miracles have been forced into a sort of parallel with some wild unauthenticated relations in the cloudy romance of a Pagan sophist, (in the case of Apollonius Tyaneus ;) or with the vague and insulated pretences of a better history, (in the case of Vespasian ;) or the mask of a detected and defeated imposture among a Roman Catholic sect. Its Prophecies have undergone the violence of a similar comparison with the oracles of Heathenism, long ago put to silence, or the legends of a more recent superstition. Its divine Morals have been represented as little better than might be derived from the philosophy of a Grecian or an Eastern teacher, Socrates or Confucius. Its wonderful progress and propagation, carried without any of the instruments of human power, and in opposition to them, have been matched with the success of the Mahometan heresy effected by the power of the sword. Thus all and countries, and creeds, have been explored, with an industry greater than the success, to furnish the separate materials of such comparisons as the objectors have been able to produce: whilst the conspicuous and uncontested fact, that Christianity unites within itself the signs and indications which no other system, philosophic or religious, does, nor

D

ages,

is pretended to do, leaves it in possession of a character which repels the indignity of all comparison, by the distant and incommensurate pretensions of the things attempted to be put in resemblance with it.

I close these prefatory remarks, which have been intended to connect Prophecy with the other proofs of the Gospel, and shew the consolidated state of the whole of them, by noticing two pieces of concise reasoning, in which the authors have consented to put the defence of our Religion on single points of strong and commanding evidence. "The Short Method with the Deists," is one: the Tract upon "the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul†," the other. The respective writers have taken different grounds for the compendious decision to which they offer to leave the inquiry: the one resting it upon an acute analysis of the criteria of matters of fact; the other upon an investigation of the principles and motives of human action, applied to the Conversion of the Apostle. It has not occurred to me to know of any reply having been made to shake the credit of either of these essays of Christian argument. For any thing that appears, their ground is unassailable. But I mention such concise and limited arguments, to remark, where they leave us, whatever conclusiveness we may choose * By Leslie. † By Lord Lyttleton.

to ascribe to them. If either of them fail to convince, there is much in store to supply the defect; and if either be adequate to a satisfactory conviction, they only conspire with other multiplied reasons in supporting the same belief. If the single stone or column be sufficient to uphold the edifice, we are not to think that the edifice really presses upon that single support; when it reposes, and with a far greater security, upon the broad united strength of the entire range and system of its fabric; that fabric of Truth, as we believe it to be, which, in its Proofs, as well as in its Doctrines, "is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Pro

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phets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner"stone +."

*Eph. II. 20.