Though it be the main point in my view, to prove that the New Testament is written under that kind of inspiration which I have been explaining, I must nevertheless beg leave to mention two other kinds, of which divines often speak, and which do also in a considerable degree belong to many parts of scripture, though I think it neither expedient, material, nor safe to assert that they run through the whole of it: I mean, an inspiration of elevation, and of suggestion.

The former, as its name plainly intimates, prevails, where the faculties, though they act in a regular, and, as it seems, a common manner, are nevertheless elevated, or raised to some extraordinary degree, so that the performance is more truly sublime, noble, and pathetic, than what would have been produced merely by the force of a man's natural genius. As for the particular degree of the divine agency, where there is indeed something of this inspiration, perhaps neither the person that is under it, nor any other creature, may be able confidently to pronounce concerning it. Perhaps, nothing less penetrating than the eye of God himself, may be able universally to distinguish that narrow line, which divides what is natural from what is supernatural, in all the productions and powers of imagination, reasoning, and language, or in the effects and powers of memory under the former head. It is a curiosity, in the minute particulars of which we are not at all concerned; as it is the same God, which, whether naturally or miraculously, worketh all and in all. 1 Cor. xii. 9. But if any excellency in the performance itself can speak it to be more than human, productions of this sort are to be found in scripture; and the rank and education of some of the sacred penmen render the hand of God peculiarly conspicuous in the sublimity and lustre of their writings. What the gifts of the spirit may in every age of the church have done, by operations of this kind, we know not. And I think, it would be presumptuous absolutely to deny, that God might act in some extraordinary degree on some of the heathen writers, to produce those glorious works of antiquity, which have been, under the direction of his providence, so efficacious, on the one hand to transmit the evidences of divine revelation, and on the other to illustrate the necessity of it: In consequence of which I cannot forbear saying by the way, that I think they who are intimately acquainted with them, are of all men upon earth the most inexcusable in rejecting christianity. But our inability to mark out the exact boundaries between nature and an extraordinary divine agency, is not much to be regretted; since it does not appear to be the design

3

of providence, by such elevations of sentiment, style, and manner, by any means to bear testimony to the person adorned with them, as a messenger sent to speak in his name ; which may as effectually be done in the plainest and simplest forms of expression, without any thing, which looks like the heightenings of art, or the sparklings of an extraordinary genius.

The other, which divines have called immediate suggestion, is the highest and most extraordinary kind of inspiration; and takes place, when the use of our faculties is superseded, and God does, as it were, speak directly to the mind; making such discoveries to it, as it could not otherwise have obtained, and dictating the very words in which these discoveries are to be communicated to others: So that a person, in what he writes from hence, is no other than first the auditor, and then, if I may be allowed the expression, the secretary of God; as John was of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he wrote from his sacred lips the seven epistles to the Asiatic churches. And it is, no doubt, to an inspiration of this kind, that the book of the revelation owes its original.

It is evident from the definitions above, that there may be a full superintendency, where neither of the latter kinds of inspiration, of elevation, or suggestion, take place: But I think, we must necessarily allow, that an inspiration of suggestion, so far as it goes, must also imply a full superintendency in recording the history of what has been seen or heard, in any prophetic vision, when it is necessary to make a report of it. For as it would, on the one hand, be impious to imagine, that the blessed God would dictate a falsehood to any of his creatures; so neither can we suppose it consistent with the divine wisdom, to suffer the prophet, through infirmity, to err in delivering a message, with which he had expressly charged him; and which would be given in vain, so far as there was a failure in the exact delivery of it.

Besides the last book of the New Testament, I mean, the revelation, which I have already mentioned in this view, it seems evident to me, that some other parts of it were given by such a suggestion; seeing there are so many predictions interspersed, and so many mysteries revealed, which lay entirely beyond the ken of any human, or perhaps angelic mind. But that this is applicable to all the history of it, or to all things contained in its epistolary parts, I chuse not to assert. For as it cannot be necessary to its entire credibility, which nothing can more effectually secure, than a full superintendency, it would subject

VOL. IV,

Y

us to many difficulties, which have been so forcibly urged by others, that it is not necessary for me here to repeat them. But I am well assured, that the apparent insufficiency of the answers, which have been returned to these objections by some very sincere, but I think in this instance, less judicious defenders of scripture, has led some people to conclude, that the scripture was not inspired at all; as if it had been on both sides agreed, that an universal suggestion was the only kind of inspiration worth contending about. The consequence of this hath been, that such as are dissatisfied with the arguments, which these defenders of the divine authority of the scripture insist upon, read the scriptures, if they read them at all, not to learn their authentic dictates, but to try the sentiments contained in them by the touch-stone of their own reason, and to separate what that shall allow to be right, from what it presumptuously concludes to be wrong. And this boasted standard has been so very defective, that on this mistaken notion they have not only rejected many of the most vital truths of christianity, but even some essential principles of natural religion. And thus they have in effect annihilated the christian revelation, at the very same time, that they have acknowledged the historical truth of the facts, on which it is built. This is the body of men, that have affected to call themselves cautious believers But their character is so admirably well described under that of Agrippa, by my honoured friend Dr. Watts, in his little treatise called the Redeemer and Sanctifier, that it may be sufficient here to have hinted it thus briefly, as the reason, why out of regard to them as well as others, I have resumed the subject of inspiration, and endeavoured to place it in, what I do in my conscience apprehend to be both a safe and rational light.

That I may remedy, so far as God shall enable me to do it, the great and destructive evil, I have just been mentioning, and may establish in the minds of christians a due regard to the sacred oracles of eternal truth, I shall now proceed to the second part of this discourse: In which

II. I am to shew, how evidently the full inspiration of the New Testament, in the sense stated above, follows from the acknowledged truth of the history which it contains, in all its leading and most important facts.

But before I proceed to the discussion of the matter, I must beg leave to observe, that, though this is what I apprehend to be the grand argument, and that which may most properly be connected with an exposition of the historical books, I am very

far from slighting those other arguments which fall not so directly in my way here.

I greatly revere the testimony of the primitive christian writers, not only to the real existence of the sacred books in those early ages, but also to their divine original: Their persuasion of which most evidently appears from the veneration, with which they speak of them, even while miraculous gifts remained in the church; and consequently, an exact attendance to a written rule might seem less absolutely necessary, and the authority of inferior teachers might approach nearer to that of the apostles. I believe every candid reader will acknowledge, that nothing can be objected to many strong passages in Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Theophilus Antiochenus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, and some other ancient writers he has mentioned, that are now lost. It is needless to produce them here, after those valuable specimens of them, which Dr. Whitby and Mons. Du Pin have given; and especially, considering what my learned friend Dr. Lardner has with so much industry and accuracy of judgment collected on this head in the second part of his credibility of the gospel history. I shall therefore content myself with observing here, that several of the most learned and considerable of these ancients speak of this veneration for the sacred writings of the New Testament, not as the result of their own private judgment, but as that, in which all the churches were unanimously agreed *.

The internal characters of divine inspiration, with which every page of the New Testament abounds, do also deserve our attentive notice; and render the book itself, if considered as detached from all external evidence whatsoever, a compendious demonstration of its own sacred original, and consequently of

*Thus Origen says, (Philocal. cap. xii. page 41.) A σE, τις παραδεξασθαι, ότι θεοπνευτοι εισιν

ως

"That if a man would not confess

bimself to be an infidel, he must admit the inspiration of the scriptures." And he elsewhere places the gospels in the number of writings, "which were received as divine by all the churches of God, and were the elements, or first principles, of the church's faith:” Εν πασαις εκκλησίαις Θεε πεπιςευμένων είναι Θείων, Στοιχεία της πίςεως της εκκλησίας.Tertullian also lays it down as a fundamental principle in disputing with heretics, "That the truth of doctrines is to be determined by scripture:" For the question has evidently the force of a strong negation. Aliunde scilicet loqui possunt de Rebus Fidei, nisi ex Litteris Fidei? (De Præscript. Heret, cap. xv.)——And Eusebius quotes a much more ancient writer than himself, (Euseb. Eccles. Hist. Lib. v. cap. 28.) who calls the scripture, ires asxalas xavova, “the rule of ancient faith ;" and who afterwards speaking of heretics, declares, "that if they denied the scriptures to be divinely inspired, they were infidels,"

the certainty of that religion which it teaches. The excellency of its doctrines, the spirituality and elevation of its design, the majesty and simplicity of its style, the agreement of its parts in the most unsuspicious manner, with its more than human efficacy on the hearts and consciences of men, do all concur to give us a very high idea of the New Testament: And I am persuaded, that the wiser and better any man is, and the more familiarly he converses with these unequalled books, the more will he be struck with this evidence. But these things, in the general, are better felt than expressed; and several of the arguments arise, not from particular passages, but from the general tenor of the books: and consequently, they cannot be judged of, but by a serious and attentive perusal.

Dismissing therefore these topics, not with neglect, but with the sincerest expressions of just and high veneration, I now proceed to that grand proof of the inspiration of the New Testament, which is derived from the credibility of its leading facts; which having so fully illustrated in the sermons referred to above, I think I have a just title to assume as the foundation of what farther reasonings may occur.

Admitting this great principle, it is undeniably certain,That Jesus of Nazareth was a most extraordinary person :That after having been foretold by many prophets, in distant periods of time, he was at length, agreeably to the repeated declaration of an angel, first to a priest ministering at the golden altar in the temple, and then to his mother, conceived by a virgin of David's family:That his birth was proclaimed by a choir of angels, who celebrated it in celestial anthems, as the foundation of peace on earth, and the most glorious display of divine benevolence to men:That before his public appearance, a person greater than any of the prophets, and whose birth had also been foretold by an angel, was sent to prepare his way:That on his being baptized, he was anointed with a wonderful effusion of the Spirit, poured down upon him by a visible symbol: And that the efficacy of this sacred agent, continually residing in him, was apparent throughout the whole course of his ministry; not only in the unspotted sanctity of his life, amidst a thousand most violent temptations, and in the bright assemblage of virtues and graces, which shone in it with a lustre before unknown, and since absolutely unparalleled ; but also in a multitude of various works of wonder and mercy, which he miraculously wrought on those, whose diseases were of the most desperate and incurable nature, and even on the dead, whom that Almighty voice of his, which had driven out