THIRTIETH ARGUMENT.

And yet, O strange infatuation! Vain man will be wise, and wicked man pretends to be righteous! Far from repenting in the dust, he pleads his innocence, and claims the rewards of imaginary merit! Incredible as the assertion is, a thousand witnesses are ready to confirm it.

Come forth, ye natural sons of virtue, who with scornful boasts attack the doctrine of man's depravity. To drown the whispers of reason and experience, sound each your own trumpet: thank God "you are not as other men:" inform us you "have a good heart" and "a clear conscience:" assure us you "do your duty, your endeavours, your best endeavours," to please the Author of your lives: vow you never “were guilty of any crime, never did any harm:" and tell us you hope to mount to heaven on the strong pinions of your "good works and pious resolutions."

When you have thus acted the Pharisee's part before your fellow creatures, go to your Creator and assume the character of the publican. Confess with your lips you are "miserable sinners," who "have done what" you "ought not to have done, and left undone what" you "ought to have done:" protest "there is no health in" you: complain "that the remembrance of your sins is grievous unto you, and the burden of them intolerable:" but remember, O ye self righteous formalists, that, by this glaring inconsistency, you give the strongest proof of your unrighteousness. You are, nevertheless, modest, when compared with your brethren of the Romish Church.

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These, far from thinking themselves "unprofitable servants," fancy

one half of it, like the Pharisees and Antinomians around us. See a striking proof of it. This very author in another book, (O, see what antichristian morality comes to!) represents the horrible sin of Sodom, as an "excusable mistake of na ture," and assures us that, "at the worst of times, there is at most upon earth only one man in a thousand that can be called wicked." Now for the proof! Hardly do we see one of those enormous crimes, that shock human nature, committed in ten years at Rome, Paris, or London, those cities where the thirst of gain, which is the parent of all crimes, is carried to the highest pitch. If men were essentially wicked, we should find, every morning, husbands murdered by their wives, &c, as we do hens killed by foxes." According to this apostle of the Deistical world, it seems that the most intense thirst of gold is no degree of wickedness: that a woman, to be very good, needs only not cut her husband's throat while he is asleep; and that it even little matters whether she omit the dire murder out of regard to his life or her own. What moral philosophy is here! Why, if the sin of Sodom is a peccadillo, a frolicsome mistake; and nothing is wickedness but a treacherous cutting of a husband's or a parent's throat; I extend my charity four times beyond thee, O Voltaire! and do maintain that there is not one wicked man in five thousand.

I insert this note to obviate the charges of severe critics, who accuse me of dealing in "gross misrepresentations, false quotations, and forgeries,” because I quote some authors when they speak as the oracles of God; and do not swell my book with their inconsistencies, when they contradict the Scriptures, reason, and the truths which they themselves have advanced in some happy moments; and because I cannot force my reason to maintain with them both sides of a glaring contradiction.

O ye Deistical moralists! let me meet with more candour, justice, and mercy from you, than I have done from the warm opposers of the second Gospel axiom. It is enough that you discard Scripture; do not, like them, make it a. part of your orthodoxy, to murder reason, and kick common sense out of doors.

they are, literally, "righteous overmuch." Becoming meritmongers, they make a stock of their works of supererogation, set up shop with the righteousness they can spare to others, and expose to sale indulgences and pardons out of their pretended treasury. Nor are there wanting sons of Simon, who with ready money purchase, as they think, not livings in the Church below, but, which is far preferable, seats in the Church above, and good places at the heavenly court.

Was ever a robe of righteousness (I had almost said a fool's coat) so coarsely woven by the slaves of imposture and avarice; and so dearly bought by the sons of superstition and credulity?

O ye spiritual Ethiopians, who paint yourselves all over with the corroding white of hypocrisy, and after all, are artful enough to lay on red paint, and imitate the blush of humble modesty; ye that borrow virtue's robes to procure admiration, and put on religion's cloak to hide your shame. ful deformity: ye that deal in external righteousness, to carry on with better success the most sordid of all trades, that of sin; of the worst of sins, pride; of the worst pride, that which is spiritual: ye numerous followers of those whom the Prophet of Christians called crafty "serpents," and soft "brood of vipers;" ye to whom he declared that "publicans and harlots shall enter the kingdom of heaven before you;" if I call you in last, to prove the desperate wickedness of the human heart, it is not because I esteem you the weakest advocates of the truth I contend for, but because you really are the strongest of my witnesses.

And now, candid reader, forget not plain matter of fact; recollect the evidence given by reason; pass sentence upon these last arguments, which I have offered to thy consideration; and say whether man's disposition and conduct toward his Creator, his fellow creatures, and himself, do not abundantly prove that he is by nature in a fallen and lost

estate.

PART IV.

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 can

not 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 xx, 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, 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

* Once indeed the Lord permitted the magicians of Egypt so to use their art, as to counterfeit for a time some of Moses' miracles; but it was only to make the authenticity of others more conspicuous. This being the happy effect of the contest, when these ministers of Satan withdrew confounded, and were forced to acknowledge that the finger of God was evidently displayed through the rod of their antagonist,

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 Chris. tians 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;* 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

"Not many noble, not many wise, are called," says the apostle: nevertheless, some of both, even at the rise of Christianity, openly stood up for its truth. Among the noble we find Joseph, a member of the great Jewish council, Dionysius, one of the judges at Athens, and Flavius Clemens, a Roman senator; and among the wise, Quadratus, Aristides, and Athenagoras, Athenian philosophers; Clemens, Arnobius, Ammonius, Annatolius, &c, men of great learning at Alexandria; and at Rome, Justin Martyr and Tertullian, both famous apologists for the religion of Jesus; the latter of whom, in the second century, told the Roman governors, that their corporations, councils, and armies, and the emperor's palace, were full of Christians; nor is this improbable, since so early as St. Paul's days, “the saints of Cesar's household saluted" those of the Roman provinces, Phil. iv, 2. How credulous are they who can believe that persons of such rank and learning could be deluded by Jewish fishermen into the worship of a crucified impostor!

the city and temple of Jerusalem, foretold by Christ, Matt. xxiv, 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 Matt. x, 22, 35; John xv, 30; and Gal. iv, 29; and the present miserable state of the Jews, so exactly described by Moses above three thousand years ago; see Deut. xxviii, 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: "0 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 xiii, 1, &c, with 2 Kings xxiii, 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,* 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,

* If the histories contained in the Old Testament were in general for the credit of the Jews, the love of praise might indeed have engaged some of them to join in a public forgery. But that book, of which they have always been so tenacious, presents the world chiefly with an account of their monstrous ingratitude, unparalleled obstinacy, perpetual rebellions, abominable idolatries; and of the fearful judgments which their wickedness brought upon them. Moses, who leads the van of their sacred authors, sums up his history of the Israelites, and draws up their character in these disgraceful words, which he spake to their face: "Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you," Deut. ix, 24. And even David and Solomon, their greatest kings, are represented in those books as guilty of the greatest enormities. O ye Deists, I appeal to your reason, and ask, Would you die for, would you even connive at a notorious forgery, supposing the design of it were merely to impose upon the world as Divine, a book that should perpetually stigmatize your ancestors, and fix horrid blots upon the names, for which you have the greatest veneration?