CHAPTER X.

TESTIMONY TO THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION FROM THE OPPOSITION IT HAS ENCOUNTERED.

WHILE it might have been expected that the religion of Jesus Christ, which breathes love to the human race, and never fails to produce this love in all who submit to it, would be favourably received by the world, the contrary has at all times been evinced. To whatever quarter we turn, we find the enmity it excited to be both violent and unremitting. This enmity is proved by the manner in which the testimony borne by the apostles and first Christians was generally received; by the cruel persecutions, even unto death, which they encountered; and by all the violent and persevering efforts of the Jew and the Gentile, the magistrate and the people, the learned and the unlearned, to arrest the progress of Christianity. Notwithstanding the amazing strength and variety of its proofs, no false religion, not even the most baleful, cruel, and malignant superstition, was ever opposed with such continued and persevering zeal, with such bitterness of hatred, with such insidiousness, wrath, and malice, and at such a sacrifice of time, talents, labour, and expense. How unlikely was it that the Gospel should at the same time be so virulently hated, and yet so triumphantly victorious in the world? Both

circumstances were clearly predicted, and both of them have been literally fulfilled.

What must have been the malignity, fury, and vengeance of the Jews against the doctrine of Jesus Christ, when, to crush his religion, they brought ruin on themselves, which nothing but blindness, arising from the infatuating influence of their hateful passions, could have prevented them from perceiving! Saul of Tarsus was filled with such hatred to Christianity, that he devoted himself as a missionary for its destruction. And to this hour the Jews have a deeper abhorrence of Jesus Christ and his doctrine, than of any of the gods and superstitions of the Heathens.

Among the opponents of the Gospel in every age, have been sages, philosophers, and men of letters, as well as the devotees of licentiousness. This might at first sight appear more injurious to the character of Christianity than to their own. It might be imagined that the religion opposed by such men could not be true. But it is necessary to reflect, that when such characters have opposed it, they have opposed it in a way in which they have opposed nothing else. They have opposed it with anger, hatred, violence, cunning, and disingenuity. While they are complaisant and civil to the grossest superstitions, they never meet Christianity but with a scowl. They cannot be civil in the shortest interview; nor, with all the polish of their manners, abstain from the rudeness of attack. The man of candour and moderation becomes a calumniator and a zealot, the man of liberality becomes a bigot, the boasted freethinker cannot command patience to examine; and the pretender to proud virtue, stoops to the base arts of sophistry, disingenuity, and chicanery.

The rancour and unfairness with which writers, in

general so candid, so accurate, so impartial, as Tacitus and Suetonius, the great Roman historians, have spoken of Christianity, is very remarkable. This fact itself is still more striking, when we consider how complaisant the professors of different heathen superstitions were to one another. These writers can hardly find language to express their abhorrence of the new system; and they scruple not to brand as a destructive superstition, and guilty of the hatred of mankind, that benign religion which breathes love to the human race. This observation is also strikingly verified in the writings of Gibbon and Hume, and other modern infidels.

The enmity of Mr Gibbon against the religion of Jesus Christ, is discovered in his very insidious and uncandid attacks. He omits no opportunity of giving it a secret stab. Yet he behaves with the utmost complaisance to Paganism. He seems even to be greatly pleased with its gods, and speaks of " the elegant mythology of the Greeks." To depreciate the character of the early Christians, and to throw contempt on their religion, appears through the whole of his history to be his invariable object.

How great must have been the hatred of Mr Hume to the religion of the Bible, when it blinded him to such a degree, that he saw little or no difference between the religion of the Jews and that of the Egyptians -almost a perfect resemblance between two systems, one of which teaches the worship of the one Jehovah, the Creator of Heaven and of Earth, and the other recognises in its worship as gods every kind of beasts, birds, and reptiles !* He speaks of it as "strange that the

* It is a remarkable circumstance, that the most civilized nations among idolaters have always manifested the greatest folly in religion.

Egyptian religion, though so absurd, should yet have borne so great a resemblance to the Jewish, that ancient writers, even of the greatest genius, were not able to observe any difference betwixt them. For it is very remarkable," he continues, "that both Tacitus and Suetonius, when they mention that decree of the senate under Tiberius, by which the Egyptian and Jewish proselytes were banished from Rome, expressly treat these religions as the same; and it appears that even the decree itself was founded on that supposition." "These wise heathens," he adds, "observing something in the general air, and genius, and spirit of the two religions, to be the same, esteemed the differences of their dogmas too frivolous to deserve any notice."

Here we have an example of the manner in which such writers as Mr Hume take up the subject of religion, and of the superficial, unfair, and perverse representations, by which they blind themselves, and mislead others. In the present instance, Mr Hume's statement amounts to this, that the decree of the Roman senate to banish certain persons from Rome, was framed solely for the object it had in view, and did not enter into distinctions of foreign modes of worship, different

Those who were called barbarians, adored the Sun and the Moon, and this was the most plausible kind of idolatry. But the Egyptians, who were first in cultivation, had an ox for their god. The Greeks, who excelled them in philosophy, ranked even human passions among their gods; and finally, the Romans deified even the infernal furies. At this day the American Indians worship the thunder, but men more civilized have adored the Devil. God has thus punished those nations which enjoyed most light, but who did not glorify him; he therefore abandoned them to the vanity of their minds, so that, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

from the state religion; and that Tacitus and Suetonius in their general histories, in relating this fact, followed the same method. Yet, with an air of gravity and surprise, he dwells on this circumstance, and represents these historians as "not able to observe any difference" between the Jewish and Egyptian modes of worship. And, to heighten our wonder, he adds, that they were "wise" men, and writers of the "greatest genius." If the stress is thus to be laid on the difficulty of the case, and these "wise heathens," if they ought to have made a distinction in their narration respecting the Jewish and Egyptian religions, yet treat them "as the same,” it is “ strange" indeed. For the Egyptian religion consisted in the observance of the grossest and most ridiculous superstitions. "You enter," says Lucian, "into a magnificent temple, every part of which glitters with gold and silver; you then look attentively for a god, and are cheated with a stork, an ape, or a cat."

Such being the nature of the Egyptian religion, it is not necessary to point out the absurdity of supposing, that wise men, after taking pains to examine, (for this is Mr Hume's unfounded, and consequently unfair representation, on which all the effect of his insinuation depends,) were not able to observe any difference between the two religions. But that they really were ignorant of the Jewish religion is not strange. Why should it be thought strange that Suetonius and Tacitus were as ignorant as Mr Hume himself of a subject they had never examined, from which their prejudices kept them at the greatest distance? The aversion of Tacitus to the Jewish nation, and his want of accuracy in many circumstances that he relates concerning them, is notorious. Speaking of the departure of the Israel