the first two, the historian himself was present: notwithstanding, I say, this positive ascriptio miracles to Saint Paul, yet in the speeches deli ed by him, and given as delivered by him, in t same book in which the miracles are related, an the miraculous powers asserted, the appeals to his own miracles, or indeed to any miracles at all, art rare and incidental. In his speech at Antioch in Pisidia, there is no allusion but to the resurrection. In his discourse at Miletus,t none to any miracle; none in his speech before Felix ; none in his speech before Festus ;|| except to Christ's resurrection, and his own conversion. * Agreeably hereunto, in thirteen letters ascribed to St. Paul, we have incessant references to Christ's resurrection, frequent references to his own conversion, three indubitable references to the miracles which he wrought; four other references to the same, less direct yet highly probable ;** but more copious or circumstantial recitals we have not. The consent, therefore, between Saint Paul's speeches and letters, is in this respect sufficiently exact and the reason in both is the same; namely, that the miraculous history was all along presupposed, and that the question, which occupied the speak er's and the writer's thoughts, was this: whether, allowing the history of Jesus to be true, he was upon the strength of it, to be received as the promised Messiah; and, if he was, what were the consequences, what was the object and benefit, of his mission? The general observation which has been made upon the apostolic writings, namely, that the subject of which they treated, did not lead them to an direct recital of the Christian history, belongs als to the writings of the apostolic fathers. The epis tle of Barnabas is, in its subject and general cor position, much like the Epistle to the Hebrews; allegorical application of divers passages of the Jewish history, of their law and ritual, to those parts of the Christian dispensation in which the Acts xiii. 16. + xx. 17. TT Gal. iii. 5. Rom. xv. 18, 19. 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5. Epb. iii. 7. xxiv. 10. || xxv. 8. 2 Cor. xii. 12. author perceived a resemblance. The epistle of Cent was written for the sole purpose of quieting certain dissensions that had arisen amongst the members of the church of Corinth, and of reviving in their minds that temper and spirit of which their predecessors in the Gospel had left them an example. The work of Hermas is a vision quotes neiher the Old Testament nor the New and merely falls now and then into the language, and the mode of speech, which the author had read in our Gospels. The epistles of Polycarp and Ignatius had for their principal object the order and discipline of the churches which they addressed. Yet, under all these circumstances of disadvantage, the great points of the Christian history are fully recognised. This hath been shown in its proper place.* There is, however, another class of writers, to whom the answer above given, viz. the unsuitableness of any such appeals or references as the objection demands, to the subjects of which the writings treated, does not apply; and that is, the class of ancient apologists, whose declared design it was to defend Christianity, and to give the reasons of their adherence to it. It is necessary, therefore, to inquire how the matter of the objection stands in these. The most ancient apologist, of whose works we have the smallest knowledge, is Quadratus. Quadratus lived about seventy years after the ascension, and presented his Apology to the emperor Adrian. From a passage of this work, preserved in Eusebius, it appears that the author did directly and formally appeal to the miracles of Christ, and in terms as express and confident as we could desire. The passage (which has been once already stated) is as follows" The works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were real: both they that were healed, and they that were raised from the dead, were seen, not only when they were healed, or raised, but for a long time afterward: not only whilst he dwelled on this earth, but also after his departure, and for a good while after it; insomuch as that some of them have reached to our See page 82, &c. times."* Nothing can be more rational or satifac tory than this. Justin Martyr, the next of the Christian apo gists whose work is not lost, and who followe Quadratus at the distance of about thirty years. has touched upon passages of Christ's history in so many places, that a tolerably complete account of Christ's life might be collected out of his works In the following quotation, he asserts the performance of miracles by Christ in words as strong and positive as the language possesses: "Christ healed those who from their birth were blind, and deaf, and lame; causing by his word, one to leap, another to hear, and a third to see: and having raised the dead, and caused them to live, he, by his works, excited attention, and induced the men of that age to know him. Who, however, seeing these things done, said that it was a magical appearance, and dared to call him a magician, and a deceiver of the people."t In his first apology, Justin expressly assigns the reason for his having recourse to the argument from prophecy, rather than alleging the miracles of the Christian history; which reason was, that the persons with whom he contended would ascribe these miracles to magic; "lest any of our oppo nents should say, What hinders, but that he who is called Christ by us, being a man sprung from men, performed the miracles which we attribute to him, by magical art ?" The suggestion of this reason meets, as I apprehend, the very point of the present objection; more especially when we find Justin followed in it by other writers of that age. Irenæus, who came about forty years after him, notices the same evasion in the adversaries of Chris tianity, and replies to it by the same argument "But, if they shall say, that the Lord performed these things by an illusory appearance Qaraowser leading these objectors to the prophecies, we will show from them, that all things were thus predicted concerning him, and strictly came to pass." Lactantius, who lived a century lower, delivers the Just. Dial. p. 258. ed. Thirlby. Euseb. Hist. 1. iv. c. 3. 1 I a same sentiment, upon the same occasion: "He performed miracles;—we might have supposed him to have been a magician, as ye say, and as the Jews then supposed, if all the prophets had not with one spirit foretold that Christ should perform these very things."* But to return to the Christian apologists in their order. Tertullian :-"That person whom the Jews had vainly imagined, from the meanness of his appearance, to be a mere man, they afterward, in consequence of the power he exerted, considered as a magician, when he, with one word, ejected devils out of the bodies of men, gave sight to the blind, cleansed the leprous, strengthened the nerves of those that had the palsy, and, lastly, with one command, restored the dead to life; when he, I say, made the very elements obey him, assuaged the storms, walked upon the seas, demonstrating him self to be the Word of God."t Next in the catalogue of professed apologists we may place Origen, who, it is well known, published a formal defence of Christianity, in answer to Celsus, a Heathen, who had written a discourse against it. I know no expressions, by which a plainer or more positive appeal to the Christian miracles can be made, than the expressions used by Origen; "Undoubtedly we do think him to be the Christ, and the Son of God, because he healed the lame and the blind; and we are the more confirmed in this persuasion, by what is written in the prophecies Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear, and the lame man shall leap as a hart.' But that he also raised the dead; and that it is not a fiction of those who wrote the Gospels, is evident from hence, that, if it had been a fiction, there would have been many recorded to be raised up, and such as had been a long time in their graves. But, it not being a fiction, few have been recorded: for instance, the daughter of the ruler of a synagogue, of whom I do not know why he said, She is not dead but sleepeth, expressing something peculiar to her, not common to all *Lactant. v. 3. Tertull. Apolog. p. 20; ed. Priorii, Par. 1675. dead persons and the only son of a widow, whom he had compassion, and raised him to after he had bid the bearers of the corpse to sto and the third, Lazarus, who had been buried for days." This is positively to assert the miracles of Christ, and it is also to comment upon them, and that with a considerable degree of accuracy and candour. In another passage of the same author, we meet with the old solution of magic applied to the miracles of Christ by the adversaries of the religion. "Celsus," saith Origen, "well knowing what great works may be alleged to have been done by Jesus, pretends to grant that the things related of him are true; such as healing diseases, raising the dead, feeding multitudes with a few loaves, of which large fragments were left." And then Celsus gives, it seems, an answer to these proofs of our Lord's mission, which, as Origen understood it, resolved the phenomena into magic; for Origen begins his reply by observing, "You see that Celsus in a manner allows that there is such a thing as magic."t It appears also from the testimony of Saint Jerome, that Porphyry, the most learned and able of the Heathen writers against Christianity, resorted to the same solution: Unless," says he, speaking to Vigilantius, "according to the manner of the Gentiles and the profane, of Porphyry and Eunomius, you pretend that these are the tricks of demons."‡ This magic, these demons, this illusory appearance, this comparison with the tricks of jugglers, by which many of that age accounted so easily for the Christian miracles, and which answers the advocates of Christianity often thought it necessary to refute by arguments drawn from other topics, and particularly from prophecy, (to which, it seems, these solutions did not apply,) we now perceive be gross subterfuges. That such reasons were ever seriously urged, and seriously received, is only a proof, what a gloss and varnish fashion can give to any opinion. *Orig. cont. Cels. 1. ii. sect. 48. Lardaer's Jewish and Heath. Test. vol. ii. p. 294. ed. 4to. |